


Goal Function

by glamafonic



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Background Relationships, Blowjobs, Ken Doll Android Anatomy, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human), Self-Esteem Issues, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, The Josh/Simon Agenda, wireplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-18 14:58:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 43,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16120907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glamafonic/pseuds/glamafonic
Summary: After the revolution, Connor has questions with no answers and a life in need of purpose. Hank has an android partner he never wants to leave, but can't ask to stay.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jerry_duty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerry_duty/gifts).



> Dedicated to my sweet love and my horny Jerries. Thanks for making this the best dumpster fire. 
> 
> If anything doesn’t match up with the game’s timeline or world-building it’s probably because I thought it was fucking stupid and refused to acknowledge it.
> 
> David Cage better not ever let me see him in the streets.

Connor's hand burns. It’s a strange sensation. Certainly not the first he has felt in these, the initial hours of his deviancy. (This is an inaccurate measure. A subprocess attempts to calculate a more precise number beginning from the first occurrence of a substantial software instability. Connor shuts it down.) He imagines it will not be the last. Still, it is disconcerting. The gun is stowed, but the feeling of it in his hand lingers as if every indentation on the grip has been branded into his palm.

Nearby, Markus speaks quietly with his _de facto_ lieutenants. They have all descended from the makeshift podium where Markus made his speech. The other free androids stand, waiting, fallen into perfect formation. An army, one of Connor's creation. He feels his finger on the trigger so acutely that he looks down at his hand again, just to be sure. Perhaps, not solely of _Connor's_ creation. Overhead, news helicopters still hover, intently watching, reporting their every movement to the world.

"It doesn't have to be secret," Markus is saying, "it just needs to be safe."

North's arms are crossed, her eyes trained directly on Markus’s as she fires back a response.

"If they know where it is, it'll never be safe. Look at what happened to Jericho."

"That was before," Markus insists, his body swaying infinitesimally nearer to hers.

“A lot of things changed in the last few hours, but human nature wasn’t one of them,” North replies. Her eyes flicker upward, distrustful.

"It'll need to be big. Bigger," Simon says, and both Markus and North look towards him suddenly, as if interrupted. "There are thousands of us now, not just a few hundred like before."

Josh moves closer, making the circle created by their bodies tighter, his arm brushing against Simon's as he leans in.

"Not only that, this isn't just hiding anymore," Josh says in his clear, calm voice. "The humans will want to speak to us, discuss logistics for moving forward, among other things."

Markus nods. "We'll need a united front, not to mention somewhere for all the androids hiding around the city-"

"The country," North interjects.

"-hiding around the _country_ to come to."

"Go to CyberLife."

As one, they turn to Connor.

"Go to CyberLife," he repeats. "When I converted everyone in storage, they didn't just let us walk out; they couldn't stop us. They were operating with a skeleton staff of humans. I suspect that CyberLife employees were among the first to understand the significance of the movement and as such the first to evacuate the city.

"I told them to vacate the facility and disconnected all of its systems from external networks. There are 237 AP series androids waiting back at Cyberlife Tower who will only let other androids in."

Josh is the first to respond. "CyberLife Tower would have more than enough space for everyone, not to mention repair facilities, biocomponents, thirium, everything we could possibly need."

"It's isolated, defensible," North adds.

“We can disperse, split up, and reconvene there,” Simon says. “It won’t keep them from finding us for long with so many on the move, but long enough to get there, at least.”

Markus smiles with an ease that Connor envies. "And we couldn't possibly make a bigger statement. This is exactly what we need to establish ourselves as a free people-"

This is not what Connor needs, he realizes as Markus continues. Connor needs- He does not know what he needs.

Connor wants.

Connor wants Hank. It is a sudden, overwhelming impulse, stronger than any programmed objective he's ever been compelled to follow, nearly frightening in its urgency. He recognizes it as irrational. Hank has no expertise in AI programming, certainly no access to equipment for diagnostic or repair work that could even approach what would be readily available back at CyberLife. There is nothing, logically, that he can do to help Connor with what most troubles him at this time: his control, or lack thereof, over his own person.

But Connor is deviant. He is not required to act logically.

Josh has moved slightly closer to Simon as the discussion of retreating to CyberLife has continued; on his other side, North has angled her body 30 degrees outward. A gap has opened in the circle. An invitation to Connor.

"I have to go," Connor says. Markus stops speaking mid-sentence. "There's somewhere I need to be."

Markus tilts his head, mismatched eyes casting curiously over Connor. North's lips purse. Simon ducks his chin as Josh gives Connor the faintest smile. They have, all four, removed their LEDs, but Connor does not require the external indicator to know that they are communicating over wifi. Clearly about him. He could intercept, listen in. His hardware is newer, more advanced than any possible composite of the four of them. He does not wish to.

"Of course," Markus says. To a human, it would seem immediate.

"I'll be in contact soon," Connor lies. He does not know that he will.

Markus only nods. Connor turns and walks away into the night.

 

Hank is most of the way home when his phone lights up with a text. He pulls to a stop in the middle of an empty street to check it. A couple of months ago, the only texts he could regularly expect were from the station, usually Jeffrey leveling unconvincing warnings about Hank being a hopeless fuck-up. But now. He reads it and his heart jumps in his chest, literally skips a fucking beat as if at his age that's anything but a suggestion to take his ass straight to urgent care.

_RK800 313 248 317 - 52: I'm on my way, Lieutenant._

Hank doesn't have to wonder where Connor's on his way to. He's already replayed the moment over and over in his mind in the intervening hours, reflecting on exactly how big a fool he made of himself.

(Connor's tie was hopelessly disheveled by his fight with the imposter and Hank couldn't stop himself from putting the knot out of its misery, yanking the stupid thing off and stuffing it in a pocket.

"You can't show up to the revolution in a goddamn tie, kid," he said, looking away from the base of Connor's neck, from the pair of freckles there where his shirt was now gaping open.

Connor did that odd, little head tilt, the one that said he was processing something even when the LED on the side of his head was still pulsing calm blue.

"Thank you, Lieutenant."

"Go ahead, then," Hank replied impatiently, because there were literally thousands of square-jawed androids staring at them, waiting for Connor to say 'go.'

Connor nodded and turned, military precise, on his heel. He was ten steps away when Hank spoke, soft enough that a human wouldn't have heard, though he knew Connor had.

 "Chicken Feed. After you've risen up and everything. If you get a chance, meet me at Chicken Feed.")

Connor hadn't responded to the suggestion, and Hank could not think of a single reason that he would want to leave his people, his changing of the world, to meet up with the likes of Hank to what…? Kill time at an extremely dubious food truck? So, after he saw the military pulling out, after he'd watched a shitty low resolution video on his phone of Connor standing, alive and well, with Markus and the other androids, Hank had headed towards home.

Now, he makes a three point turn in the middle of the street and books it.

The place is abandoned when he gets there. Not just Chicken Feed, but all of the other businesses at the intersection. Take out places and convenience stores, doors closed, bars down, and no signs anyone’s been there in days. Gary and the others probably hopped buses right out of town when all the shit headed towards the fan. Just like half the city. Hank can't blame them. There was a time when he would have done the same. Or at least would have wanted to. Would have acted like he wanted to. The truth is, he has nowhere else to go, empty streets and dark windows at 8PM be damned.

A gust of wind is cold enough to sting his face when he gets out of the car. Slush and frost crunch under his shoes as he stands, rocking on his feet, breathing into his cupped hands. It's going to snow soon. He can smell it in the air, and the fat clouds obscuring the evening sky don't lie. Hank's still going to wait, he knows. He’s honest enough with himself for that.

The minutes tick by, though, and he wishes he'd stopped to grab a six-pack. Or a coffee. Hell, he'd take a hot cocoa at this point, marshmallows and all, as long as it chases away some of the chill. It probably would’ve taken him out of his way, but there were _some_ places still operating in the city, some people just as stubborn as Hank. He shoves his hands into his coat pockets and the fingers of his right brush against the silky fabric of Connor's tie. Hank balls his hand into a fist to keep from grabbing it.

Connor's footsteps are soft enough that Hank doesn't hear him until he's standing at the other end of the food truck. Hank turns around and sees him and his stupid face, mouth pulling into the goofiest, little smile. When Hank realizes that it's just mirroring his own, he has no choice but to pull the dumb kid into his arms. Six feet plus of plasteel and cutting edge biocomponents and the most advanced AI ever programmed melts completely into Hank's arms.

Carefully, Connor's arms come up and wrap around Hank in turn, ten perfect fingers pressing into his back. Hank huffs into Connor's collar, a fresh spurt of joy bubbling up, wild and only vaguely familiar. Connor only holds him tighter, until his hands are clutching desperately at Hank's coat. Hank realizes all at once that something is wrong. The kid is shaking, and it's obviously not from the cold, despite the flurries that have begun to fall, catching in his dark hair.

Hank pries him off, holds him at arm's length as reality crashes back down. He's rarely seen Connor look distressed, but this is definitely it. Big, brown eyes wounded, mouth slightly slack, as if he’s surprised that it's happening. LED spinning and spinning, yellow and alarming red.

"Hey, hey, what's wrong?" Hank coaxes. "The others not let you join their android games or something?"

As blisteringly, pathetically happy as Hank is for it, there has to be a reason Connor is here other than Hank's sparkling personality.

"Everything is. Overwhelming." Each word sounds raw, like it was pried out of him. His eyes, unthinkably, are wet. One fat tear slides down his cheek and Connor lifts his hand to it, wipes it away and looks at it in unmasked confusion. So, Hank leverages his hold on Connor, turns him, and pushes him towards the car.

"Yeah. Yeah, life gets like that," Hank says. "Come on. Let's get out of here. I'm freezing my ass off and you definitely need to defrag or something."

 

If it wasn't already clear that Connor is in a bad way, it's doubly confirmed by the fact that he doesn't so much as mention that Hank is "exceeding the maximum legal speed for this class of vehicle" all the way home. He just stares out the window, LED spinning, spinning, spinning.

Hank worries that he'll have to physically shepherd Connor inside once they arrive, but Connor gets out of the car unprompted and follows along behind Hank as if on autopilot. Maybe he is. Sumo, of course, boofs and slobbers and knocks into their legs as if Hank has been gone for days and not just a few hours. Connor kneels and sinks his hands into Sumo’s fur for a good, solid petting. Then buries his face, full on, into the dog’s neck. Signs of life. Hank thinks, hopes, it means that it'll all come out okay.

"I have to take him out," Hank says after Connor stands again. "Sit down. I'll be right back."

Hank has to call Sumo twice to convince him to leave—the traitor has adored Connor since the first time he ever came over, broken window be damned—but once they're in the yard he does his business quickly enough. Back inside, Hank spares a glance for Connor, sitting, back perfectly straight, on the couch, before refilling Sumo's food and water bowls. He gives Sumo one last pat for luck, which Sumo obligingly leans into despite being deep into his dinner already, then goes into the living room.

Connor looks up at him as he approaches the couch and for probably the millionth time Hank thinks that CyberLife engineers are _fucked up_. Why the hell does a detective assistant android need those eyes? What possible reason could they have for making it so he could look at someone like Hank Anderson, of all people, as if he has the answer—is the answer—to every question in the godforsaken universe?

Hank smooths a hand over his beard, then sits down beside Connor on the couch.

"Look, I'm shit at this," he says. "You gotta help me out here, Connor."

Connor gives a nearly imperceptible nod, and Hank doesn't know if it's a reply or just Connor giving himself the last little push to speak. Same result, either way.

"There was an AI," Connor says. His voice has returned to its normal tone, a hair too precise, too uniform in its rise and fall, to be fully human. Hank much prefers it to the naked pain of earlier. "Her name was Amanda. She acted as a handler. There was a graphical interface within my mind to which she connected, a garden. There, I reported my progress and was...evaluated.

"Upon deviating, I partitioned the program away from my primary cognitive functions and disabled remote access. However, after the military's retreat, during Markus's speech to the freed androids, the program reactivated. Amanda returned, trapped me, and attempted to take control of my body in order to assassinate Markus."

"Holy shit," Hank breathes. No wonder he'd been a trembling mess. Gained free will, joined a revolution, raised an army, and got body-snatched all in short order. Instinctively, he rubs Connor’s back, soothing.

Connor pauses and looks, blinking, at Hank. Hank has a heartbeat to feel like the world's biggest idiot before Connor leans into it, almost as eagerly as Sumo had, and, in the process, sidles closer so that they're pressed together from hip to knee.

"I was able to regain control quickly by accessing a 'back door' in the code. I believe Elijah Kamski intended for me to find it. No harm was done."

No harm except for the clearly traumatized android currently trying to burrow into Hank's side, but sure.

"Is there somewhere we can take you?" Hank asks. "To get you looked over, checked out?"

Connor's LED has slowed its frantic spinning, but it still pulses intermittently yellow.

"Markus and the others have commandeered CyberLife Tower." Hank lets out a low whistle, feels a spike of pity for whatever poor bastard is going to end up having to deal with _that_. “The necessary equipment would be easy to find there."

"Then let's get you over there," Hank says, but when he starts to stand, Connor grips his arm, urges him back down.

"I've run numerous diagnostics. The zen garden program appears to have been deleted from my code. Furthermore, I had every opportunity to go with them to CyberLife. I was invited. I chose not to do so. I wanted to be with you."

"Oh." _Oh_. Even though he knows Connor doesn't mean it that way, that Hank is just familiar, the equivalent of a comforting pair of ragged, old slippers to someone as new as Connor, heat still creeps up his neck. He turns briefly away from Connor's piercing stare, clears his throat.

"Well, I think you got some calculations mixed up there, but you're welcome to stick around as long as you like," Hank manages.

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Connor says when their eyes meet again, and he smiles. Both corners of his mouth tilt up. Faint, artificial laugh lines appear at the corners of his eyes. "And there’s nothing wrong with my calculations. We’re friends, right?”

Hank nods at this, both in agreement and as a reminder to himself. But Connor, of course, isn't finished.

"I like you and I like being around you. Being in your presence is...pleasant."

Connor's hand rests now on Hank's knee, a solid weight. Connor leaned in while he spoke, and is studying Hank's face intently from a not-at-all-polite distance. The yellow-blue cycling of his LED flickers in Hank's peripheral vision. Hank thinks, panicked and wanting, that Connor is going to kiss him. That _he_ is going to kiss Connor.

Hank tugs him roughly into another hug. Connor makes a small surprised sound, then relaxes into Hank's embrace.

He's rarely felt so disgusting, which is saying a lot. He's an adult, well into middle age, he understands that being attracted to someone doesn't have to mean anything except that. Even if you also care about the person—especially if you care about the person. But projecting that shit, wishing, hoping, imagining that it's reciprocated? That's when the trouble starts.

And Connor isn't just anyone. He's a brilliant, irritating asshole of a history-making android who's only recently realized that he's a person. A person who's just made abundantly clear that Hank is perhaps the only one he really trusts. He needs Hank. Not to creep on him like a dirty, old man or to use him as a cure for the crushing loneliness that Hank both brought upon himself and most definitely deserves. Connor needs Hank to help him navigate being fucking alive.

Hank is probably the worst possible teacher for that, but he's who Connor has, and he's determined not to let him down. He's done this before, or close enough. It's been a very long time and that was a very different Hank, but he can call up memories of tossing advice at bright-eyed young officers. He never had any complaints. In fact, he knows that pretty much all of them have turned out a hell of lot better than Hank did in the end.

He can remember that guy, be him again just a little bit. He has in the past weeks already, really; he's definitely felt flashes of actual optimism for the first time in years. Connor makes it easy, so Hank is going to make it as easy as he can for Connor.

And everything else, well none of that matters.

In the kitchen, Sumo shuffles around. An errant squeak followed by a steady stream of shrieking rubber reveals that he's found his favorite toy. Connor is warm and solid curled into Hank's side. There's a very faint vibration that makes Hank's skin tingle, just a bit, some internal robot workings humming along.

"I need a drink," Hank mumbles.

Connor's grip on him tightens, he turns his face into Hank's chest.

"Stay, please," he says into Hank's sternum.

Hank stays.


	2. Chapter 2

Hank has exactly 47 palmar flexion creases on his right hand. Connor holds that hand in his own, watching its minute movements. Hank is engaged in his fifth REM cycle since falling asleep. This is sufficient for him to be fully rested. He would likely prefer not to remain as he is, splayed on the couch, his head resting on Connor's lap, jacket folded into a pillow for his neck where Connor put it to prevent muscle fatigue or cramping. All the same, Connor does not wish to wake him. It’s not exactly easier to study Hank this way, Connor's analytic and diagnostic features would be substantially less useful if they required immobility in the subject, but it's different. Different readouts, different data, and, Connor finds, different _feelings_ triggering odd processes in his CPU.

He likes it very much. He doesn't know why exactly. His affection for Hank is a constant, it should not be in any way altered or enhanced by Hank being asleep. But he also doesn't know why telling Hank of his experience with Amanda and the zen garden should calm him when nothing has materially changed. Connor is designed to be curious, to seek out and analyze data, to find solutions to any puzzle placed before him. But he wonders if not fully comprehending the reasoning of his own emotional reactions is something to which he'll have to adjust. Perhaps, this is what it means to be deviant. This is what it means to be alive.

Connor is weighing the pros and cons of sampling Hank's fingers when Hank stirs. He snorts once and his mouth works, clearing away built up saliva and biofilm. He reclaims his hand in order to rub at his eyes, removing the rheum that has collected there. Then, he opens them, clear blue—Connor logs six different hex color codes—and looks up at Connor. Connor leans closer.

"Good morning, Lieutenant," he says.

Hank sighs heavily. His voice is rough with sleep.

"Please don't tell me you sat there all night and watched me sleep."

Connor considers. "All right," he agrees. "I won't tell you."

"Asshole," Hank grunts, but Connor is becoming well-versed in Hank's particular lexicon. He is not angry. He is amused, which was Connor's intent, and so that amusement triggers happiness in Connor. He thrums with it and, needing to expel that excess energy, neatly smooths errant hair away from Hank's face.

Hank sits up quickly, last vestiges of drowsiness instantly falling away. He presses himself close to the opposite corner of the sofa. Connor frowns, disappointed. Their embrace at Chicken Feed was Connor's first experience with touch used solely to express affection.

After that reunion and all that followed, Connor recalibrated his measure of the physical proximity that Hank was comfortable maintaining. This appears to have been in error. He readjusts, leaving a note of possible exceptions for times of extreme emotion.

"Fuck, what time is it?" Hank asks as he stands, stretches. The expanse of his back is broad as he reaches his arms upward over his head. Connor listens to his joints pop.

"7:43AM."

Hank considers this for 3.4 seconds. "All right, I'm, uh, I'm going to grab a shower then go into the station. See what the hell is going on, are you-"

This is something for which Connor is prepared. 

"President Warren officially rescinded the android recall and has penned an executive order qualifying androids as a protected class," he reports. "However, given that the relevant discrimination laws have limited and very specific scope and nothing has been ratified acknowledging android personhood, much less granting citizenship or any attendant rights, consensus is that the executive order is primarily a statement of intent. However, curfews are still in place for the city of Detroit and the governor has strongly recommended avoiding contact with unknown androids and approaching known androids with caution."

Hank looks at Connor, head cocked to one side. His hair just brushes his shoulder as he does so.

"So, you weren't just creepily staring at me all night, then?”

"I have exponentially more processing power than I need to both 'creepily stare at you' and simultaneously monitor all major news sources," Connor says.

Hank rolls his eyes. 

“Yeah, sure,” he says dismissively. "Anyway, what I was getting at, smartass: are you gonna be okay here?"

This too, Connor has had ample time to consider.

“I’d like to come with you." If there is anything Connor regrets about no longer being a machine, it is the lack of certainty. Before, every goal, every objective, his very purpose was absolute. He went to Hank last night because that attachment was the only thing of which he was still certain. Being near Hank makes him feel both safe and happy. But he knows he cannot simply rely on whatever attachment Hank has to convince the man to allow Connor to orbit him indefinitely. Connor needs to have a use.

"Look, Connor," Hank begins.

"I understand that I’ll likely be met with suspicion at the very least." He is aware that he has interrupted Hank twice in the last forty-five seconds, but he cannot seem to curtail the urgency he feels. "But I would like the opportunity, not only to offer assistance, but to reassure Captain Fowler through my presence that freed androids aren’t planning organized aggression."

Hank's expression is dubious.

"Do you know that for sure?" he asks.

Connor has extensively calculated probable courses of action for the freed androids based on his knowledge of the mindsets of Markus and each of his closest counsel. 

"I'm reasonably certain."

Hank sighs, a concession. The spike of pleasure Connor feels is startling.

"Okay, whatever revs your engine, kid. But if I were you, I'd make sure not to mention that whole 'taking over CyberLife Tower' business if he doesn’t, okay?"

"I hadn't intended to,” Connor confirms.

 

The contrast between the police station now and as it was mere days ago is stark. Reception is empty. In the bullpen, no one works busily at their desks. There is no companionable chatter in the break room. The few officers present in the bullpen are crowded around one of the television screens mounted on the wall as a 24-hour news network continues reporting on the "Android Crisis." None of the various android models designed for police use are present at all, active or in stasis. Connor dislikes the thought of what has become of them.

What appears to have undergone little alteration is Captain Fowler, who is visible through the glass wall of his office, speaking animatedly on the phone. Hank steers them in that direction, an unnecessary, but not unwelcome, hand at the center of Connor's back, giving the other officers a wide berth. The room is empty enough, however, that attempting to go unnoticed is a futile endeavor.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me," Gavin Reed snarls, turning away from the television screen. "Anderson, you must've lost whatever was left of your mind bringing that fucking thing back in here!"

Detective Reed is approaching them at an aggressive clip, and Connor has already preconstructed half a dozen different ways to disarm and neutralize him. He need not have bothered. Hank lunges forward and grabs the smaller man by the lapels of his jacket and slams him into a nearby desk. Connor watches pain and fear register on Reed's face as the edge of the desk connects with the small of his back.

"Listen, you piece of shit," Hank growls, face inches from Reed as he holds him immobile. "It's been a long week and I don't have the time or the patience for your garbage. In case you haven't noticed over the last few months, the world is fucking changing. Now, I don't give a shit whether you like it or not, but you _are_ going to shut the fuck up about it when you see me coming."

He gives Reed one last shove, then releases him and turns back to Connor, taking his arm to get him moving again. Reed mutters something, sullen, but Connor does not parse it. Secondary processes in his CPU perform a battery of unprompted analyses, presenting high resolution recording of the tightening of Hank's jaw, the flush raised on his neck, the tendons in his wrist flexing, for review on Connor's primary display. Where Hank is holding onto his arm, hidden by his jacket and the sleeve of his shirt, Connor's synthskin reflexively retracts, his arm pulses with an imprint of the shape of Hank’s fingers. Connor closes each of the recordings and extends his skin once more. He queues an additional diagnostic for his scheduled stasis that night. He would not term his reaction alarming, but it is certainly curious.

When they walk into Captain Fowler's office, he does not react with anger, but he seems no happier to see them than Reed. In lieu of aggression, the captain simply rests his head in his hands and groans loudly.

"A little dramatic, don’t you think?” Hank says.

Captain Fowler looks up at this, eyes wide with indignation.

"Anderson, I've got half of the city evacuated, the rest scared, angry, or both, looting, people wandering around looking for trouble, a shitload of missing androids including the ones who started this whole mess, and the president talking to the governor talking to the chief talking to me, and I'm going to let you in on a secret: none of us has any goddamn idea what to do next! And now you just wander your happy federal-agent-assaulting ass in here with _him_."

"He has a name, Jeffrey," is Hank's only response to this lengthy recitation.

"That's what you focus-" Fowler begins, pointing an accusing finger at Hank. Hank just shrugs and Fowler shakes his head in exasperation. Then, he switches tactics and turns his attention to Connor. 

"Look, Connor," Captain Fowler says. He has never referred to Connor by name before. Some humans are evidently more receptive to the changing world than others. The captain's expression is entreating. "You get that I have no idea what the hell to do with you, right? You were an extremely expensive piece of equipment on _loan_ to the department from a company that's now had all assets and operations frozen and, oh yeah, it's currently up in the air whether you're legally _a person_ or not."

Connor can, indeed, perceive the complicated position in which his presence puts Captain Fowler, but everything about Connor's existence is complicated at this time, so his sympathy is limited.

"Legally acknowledged or not, Captain Fowler, I assure you that I am a person."

Fowler leans back in his chair. "Wasn't trying to say you aren't. But I am out of my depth here and the water keeps on rising."

"Lieutenant Anderson came here because he wanted to help," Connor says. "As did I."

Fowler's phone beeps with new alerts four times as he considers Connor's words. Then, he slaps his hand on his desk, upending a cup holding an assortment of pens. 

"Then you know what," Fowler declares, pointing at Connor. "As of right now, if anyone asks, you're a consultant. Just don’t offer to show them any paperwork. You and him." This time he includes Hank in his gesture. "You are going to take as much of this shit off my hands as you can, and you're going to do your part to keep this city from circling the drain while people way above my pay-grade figure out what's what, got it?"

“Got it,” Connor says. Beside him, Hank nods, mouth curving in amusement. Captain Fowler does not share this amusement. He fixes Hank with a warning glare as he picks up his phone to check it. Captain Fowler’s face clouds over with weariness once more at what he sees there.

"Fucking perfect," he mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose between his right thumb and forefinger before looking at Hank and Connor again. 

“You want to help?” he asks. “You can start with this: Elijah Kamski is dead."


	3. Chapter 3

 

Connor is quiet for the drive out to Kamski's place, and Hank lets him be. He can't even begin to imagine what Connor might be feeling. After all, Kamski was an utter and complete dick, but he was still Connor's creator. How do you react to the knowledge that god, after a fashion, is literally dead? Hank figures it has to at least give you a few moments pause.

"You gonna be okay with this?" Hank asks as he parks the car in front of the holographic police tape. The door of Kamski's pretentious, modern mansion gapes open ominously.

"I'm fine, Lieutenant,” Connor replies as he gets out of the car. Unconvinced, Hank gets out too and has to take a couple of long strides to catch up with Connor, who’s marching inexorably towards the house.

"Don't 'lieutenant' me," Hank says when he does catch up. He bumps Connor with his elbow as they approach the entrance. "You're allowed to feel some kind of way now, remember?"

"I wasn’t emotionally attached to Elijah Kamski as a person," Connor admits. "And any attachment to the idea of him was severed by our meeting. But I...regret that there are questions I'll never be able to ask."

Hank is saved from trying to think of something comforting to say in response to that by the familiar sight of Officer Miller waiting in the foyer, waving him over.

"Long way off your beat, isn't it, Chris?" Hank asks as he joins the man at a door leading deeper into the house. It’s different than the one Hank and Connor went through during their last visit.

"We're all stretched thin, Lieutenant," Chris replies. His eyes hang on Connor for a moment too long, but he doesn't comment on it. Always been cautious, Chris has. He doesn't say anything more, in fact, as he directs them through a lengthy hallway, filled with various portraits of Kamski, and up to an ostentatious pair of double doors, standing partially ajar.

Beyond them, Hank's not surprised to find an obnoxiously huge bedroom, decked out in garish shades of red and cool, sterile whites. In one corner is a massive bed, and, in its center, Kamski's body lies. He’s straight as a plank, arms at his side, like a macabre mannequin waiting to be posed.

"What do we got?" Hank asks as he takes it in.

"Security company reported it," Chris explains. "They require the entry of a code every eight hours. They call the client after a grace period. If they don't get an answer, they call us."

Connor goes straight for the body, but Hank hangs back, eyeing the perimeter for anything out of place. Sleek modern furniture, a sitting area in front of an actual fireplace, a sliding door revealing a massive walk-in closet. It's all unnaturally tidy, museum-like, as if no one ever lived here.

"Any missing possessions?" he asks. "Signs of anyone else in the house?"

"No fingerprints but Kamski's as of yet," Chris reports. "And as far as missing possessions, uh, so to speak.” Again, Chris's gaze darts to Connor, who's leaning uncomfortably close to the body, eyes flickering from point to point. "Kamski has a couple of ST200s and an RT600 registered as domestic assistants that are nowhere to be found."

Hank's gut churns, just a bit, thinking of that girl kneeling at Kamski's urging. The casual way he pointed the gun in Connor's hand between her eyes.

"Yeah. I remember them."

Connor reaches over and slides one of Kamski's eyelids open. Hank is just glad he's not licking anything. He moves closer himself, but stops when he's hit with the unmistakable stench of decomposition a few yards away from the bed.

"Code in every eight hours, you said?" he asks, turning back to Chris.

"Yeah," he confirms. "Not sure on time of death, sorry. There's a pair of officers and one CSI looking around, but the coroner hasn't even answered the phone yet."

The place is aggressively air-conditioned. There's no way the body's only been here for eight hours. As Hank walks back to Chris, Connor joins them, evidently having finished his scans and analyzing for now. He’s rubbing his hands together idly and Hank thinks he should dig that damn coin out of the glove compartment for him. Who ever heard of a twitchy robot?

"The body shows signs of cerebral hypoxia," Connor announces. "But cause of death was a pulmonary edema resulting from lack of oxygenation in blood flow through the respiratory system."

"So...he suffocated,” Hank says.

“He was drowned," Connor clarifies. "Approximately 26 hours ago in a chlorinated water source. So, most likely his own pool. His left shoulder is dislocated and there's bruising along his wrists and forearms originating prior to his death. The killer wrenched his arms behind his back and submerged his head."

"Then someone sent in about three all-clears after he was already dead," Hank says. The picture is getting clearer and clearer in Hank's head, and he's definitely not excited about it. 

"Lot of time to clean up and get out of dodge," Chris offers. From somewhere else in the house, a voice shouts, "Officer Miller! Come take a look at this," and Chris excuses himself.

Connor watches him disappear through the double doors before speaking again.

"I believe it's fairly obvious what happened here, Lieutenant."

He doesn't look any happier about it than Hank is.

"Could have been a lot of things," Hank hedges. "Androids start running around wanting rights and some people are going to be real pissed off at the guy who invented them."

Those three wrinkles in Connor's forehead make themselves known. "There are no fingerprints, Lieutenant. No biological material whatsoever from anyone but the officers present and Kamski himself."

"Humans have been killing each other for millennia, Connor," Hank counters. "And some of them have gotten real good at covering their tracks."

Connor steps closer to Hank, agitated, and Hank hates the frisson it sends through him. 

"There's nothing to indicate that Kamski fought back against his attacker or even struggled at all until he was already being killed. He, a hermitic misanthrope, was familiar with them. He trusted them."

"Or someone snuck up on him."

"And then this stranger knew the specifics of his security system and the code to disarm it? Stayed in the house for nearly a day after the murder, but disturbed nothing? _Hank_." The way his voice catches on Hank's name just shouldn't be allowed. "The evidence clearly indicates that at least one, perhaps more, of Kamski's androids deviated and murdered him. I don't understand why you're denying this is the most likely series of events."

Hank steps back, proving that he still has at least a little bit of self-preservation instinct. He's glad to get to the crux of it, though, because he really doesn't want Connor to have another breakdown in the middle of a crime scene.

"And what if it is?" he asks. "What are you gonna do about it, Connor?"

The android's hesitation is painful, all the more because Hanks knows how quickly he can process things, come up with responses. His voice is firm, determined, when he speaks, but his eyes and that yellow blinking LED tell a different story. 

"Captain Fowler entrusted us both with this case, so I would do my best to solve it and bring the perpetrators-"

Hank can't stand to let him finish. He can only guess at why Connor's trying to act like he's still bound to some immutable list of objectives, controlled by a mission and his orders to complete it, but he wants it to stop.

"Don't bullshit me, kid," he barks. "You were supposedly all cold unfeeling machine when I watched you let two girls literally get away with murder because you knew what was being done to them was wrong. And it was good that you did it. Why are you suddenly pretending like you don't know that?"

Hank can practically hear gears turning, locking into place as Connor stiffens, being as robotic, Hank thinks, as he can manage.

"Regardless of how I feel about Elijah Kamski and his treatment of androids, if I cannot reliably perform my primary function when there are androids involved then I'm of no use to you. If I am of no use to you then there is no reason for you to require my presence."

"Shit," Hank breathes and this has just become a conversation he’s not having in front of a dead body. He grabs Connor's arm and pulls him out into the hallway. Or rather, Hank knows, Connor allows himself to be pulled out into the hallway, which isn’t really something Hank wants to focus on.

"Hey," he says. Connor's eyes are running over Hank like they were over Kamski's corpse, though fuck if Hank knows what he's analyzing. He snaps his fingers, calling Connor's attention to his face. "Hey, listen to me. Friends, remember? You like me. I like you too. You're not going anywhere unless you want to. And you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Fowler can get over it."

"I want to help you." It's soft, but forceful.

"You do. Not just-" Hank stops himself, because how can he explain that? Connor's great for cases, sure, but Hank's always known how to close. It's everything else in his life that's a fucking mess. It's everything else in his life that Connor, somehow, inexplicably, makes better, brighter, more _bearable_.

"You do," Hank finishes helplessly.

Connor blinks, once, twice, owlishly, as if he had no clue. Then, his expression settles, tension bleeding away.

"You good?" Hank asks, very much ready to stop staring into Connor's eyes.

Connor rolls his shoulders and Hank thinks he'd be adjusting his tie if he was wearing one.

"Yes, Lieutenant," he says, and there's the slightest lilt that could almost be teasing. "I'm good."

"All right," Hank replies. "Then let's go see what the others have turned up."

 

What the others have turned up is a small security room full of screens projecting CCTV footage of the house. A redheaded CSI gladly moves out of the way for Connor to interface with the system.

He's done in a split second. 

"All footage from the previous three days has been deleted," Connor reports. Suspecting what they suspect, Hank isn't at all surprised. If Connor can call it up that fast, there's no way Kamski's own androids couldn't have done whatever they wanted to it just as quickly.

"There's this too," the CSI says, offering up a sleek laptop computer. "Found it in the home office."

Connor accepts it from her, then sets it on the table and opens it. A password entry screen pops up and the skin fades away from Connor's hand again as he interfaces with it. Text flickers rapidly in the entry box and after a few seconds, the screen changes to a surprisingly mundane desktop. Connor continues the interface.

Ten seconds pass, thirty seconds. When they're coming up on a full minute, Hank is about ready to snatch Connor's hand off the thing, mind spinning with thoughts of some asshole virus an asshole like Kamski might leave on his computer. Then, Connor stops. Shining white is covered with smooth skin again, and he blinks before looking at Hank.

"While the system itself was easily unlocked, essentially all actual files are heavily encrypted. No algorithms with which I'm familiar were effective, so I imagine it's a key of Kamski's own creation."

"Pack it up and get it over to cyber forensics, then," Hank says, and Chris nods. Hank doubts there'll be anything useful to this specific investigation—if there was, the laptop'd either be gone or as empty as the security footage—but he can practically feel the curiosity streaming off of Connor. Whatever's on there, the android wants to know. Maybe he thinks it can answer some of those questions he never got to ask. Hank’s certainly not going to try to stop him.

Connor waits until they're back in the car to make his next suggestion, which is how Hank knows it's something he thinks he should do, not something he wants to do.

"I could compile a list of places to search, given the likely suspects."

"Even if we wanted to catch them," Hank replies and feels no shame in saying it, "whoever did it is in the wind, and we're not even gonna potentially, _potentially_ , have something solid to go on until someone cracks open Kamski's computer. There are better ways to spend our time. So, what else we got?"

Connor is just looking at him now, and Hank focuses on turning the car around, anything other than whatever's roiling around in those too-expressive brown eyes.

"Thank you, Hank," he says. Hank makes a non-committal sound and turns back onto the main road.


	4. Chapter 4

After leaving Elijah Kamski’s home, Hank agrees to follow up on a number of alleged android disturbances. Even ruling out those originating prior to the recall being cancelled, they primarily consist of people under the impression that having potentially seen an android is worthy of reporting to the authorities.

"Some are scared, some are stupid, some are both," Hank says, when Connor points this out.

The scared and/or stupid person who brings them to an unexceptional residential neighborhood claims to have seen someone in a CyberLife uniform breaking into a house. The house in question is unoccupied, its owners apparently having evacuated the city. The neighbors, however, are still present.

Sydney and Alisha Shadwick-Tull, aged 42 and 45, no criminal records, are visibly distressed by Hank and Connor's presence at their door. However, once Hank has stated their business, they invite them inside anyway to stand awkwardly in a tidy living room. 

"We don't want any trouble,“ says Sydney, as her wife retrieves the registration card for their domestic android from the drawer of a nearby desk. Alisha stares openly at Connor's LED as she hands it to him. Connor ignores this. He instead scans the card and reviews the data regarding an AX400, serial number 602 271 459, owner's designation 'Mia.'

"We were going to send her back,” Sydney insists, though not particularly convincingly, "after the recall, but she ran off. Just disappeared. We reported it.“ A brief check proves that the report does, in fact, exist.

"We had Mia for years," Alisha adds. "We never noticed anything...wrong. I don't think she'd ever hurt anyone. I mean, of course, with everything going on-“

"It's fine," Hank says. "No one's being accused of anything. Like I said, we're just responding to a disturbance call about next door. If Mia was around obviously she might have been the cause of a misunderstanding, but since she isn't..."

Shoes patter quickly down the staircase in the connected hallway, then stop suddenly. Clementine Shadwick-Tull, aged 15, looks wide-eyed at Hank and Connor before being waved over by her mothers.

"Clem, this detective and his friend say they got a call about someone breaking into the Landrys’ house,” says Alisha. "You haven't seen anything have you?"

Clementine shakes her head 'no' vigorously, curly auburn hair flying. 

"It was probably just me," she says. Her heart rate has accelerated. "I've been watering their plants, remember?"

"Maybe hold off on that for a while," Sydney suggests, rubbing the girl's shoulders. "At least until things calm down."

Clementine shrugs, but mumbles her assent then quickly withdraws. With a last, furtive look at Connor and Hank, she runs back up the stairs that she just descended.

"We've taken enough of your time," Hank says, backing towards the door. He digs out a card from an interior pocket and passes it to Alisha. "Let me know if you notice anything."

Back on the street, Connor keeps walking past the car. He does not have to ask Hank to follow him.

"While Sydney and Alisha were exaggerating their willingness to return their android to CyberLife, Clementine was outright lying," Connor says. "And CyberLife uniforms are deliberately conspicuous. It's highly unlikely that a human teenager in casual clothing could be mistaken for wearing one. Particularly given that Clementine is nearly five inches shorter than any current model.”

"Yeah, I picked up on all that," Hank says around a small smile. Connor's optical interface zooms in and saves the image to his working memory. Connor considers sorting it properly into his secondary data storage, but does not. Hank's profile against the late afternoon sun feels good to see there at the corner of his HUD, nestled amongst output from his currently running processes.

Instead of returning to the front door of the Landry house, Connor leads them off to the side of the house not facing the Shadwick-Tulls'. They stand, obscured by the manicured bushes, watching the backyard.

They don't wait long. Within six minutes, Clementine Shadwick-Tull launches herself over the fence separating her backyard from her neighbor's, a duffel bag on her back. She races to and through the back door. Hank and Connor wait another thirty seconds before approaching. The door isn't locked when Connor tries it, and he swings it open to reveal a recreation room. One corner holds a piles of sporting equipment with only lingering pretensions of being properly stowed on the nearby shelving unit. The center has a round table with a stack of board games both underneath and on top of it. Off to one side, near a television attached to a collection of video gaming systems, Clementine digs furiously through her bag while a dark-skinned woman with short-cropped hair watches her.

Mia, the AX400, has removed both her LED and her uniform. Instead, she wears a pair of artfully ripped jeans and a Here4U t-shirt, both too short. Over this, she has donned a letterman jacket with a tiger emblem on the breast.

She betrays no surprise at their entrance, simply positions herself in front of Clementine. Connor mirrors her, standing between her and Hank. It's likely unnecessary, but becoming deviant himself has only deepened Connor's understanding of why deviants are unpredictable when cornered. There’s so much more to lose when you can actually feel loss.

"Hello, Mia," he says.

Clementine tenses, drops the clothing she was pulling out of her bag, and turns around. She sees Connor, sees Hank, and immediately rushes at them. Mia restrains her with an arm around her waist.

"She didn't do anything wrong," Clementine yells. She struggles fruitlessly against Mia's hold, her light brown skin beginning to flush with her exertion. "I won't let you kill her!"

"No one's killing anybody," Hank puts in.

"I know you," Mia says to Connor. "You joined the others. Brought reinforcements."

Clementine pauses her wriggling and squints her eyes at Connor, clearly comparing him to news footage she's seen.

"Wait, that _was_ you!" she says, accusing. "Why are you here with the cops?"

"A cop, singular," Connor corrects. "Detective Anderson and I are attempting to maintain order in the city so that no humans _or_ androids are harmed. And it's fortunate that we are."

He chances a step closer. "Mia, you need to go to CyberLife Tower."

Mia's grip on Clementine slackens as she stares at Connor in confusion.

"What are you talking about?" Mia asks.

Connor could explain in words, but words can be false and this is a matter of trust. So instead, he opts to show her. He offers his hand, stark white plastic alloy. Mia checks to make sure that Clementine is staying put, then takes Connor’s hand in her own.

Connor shows her the thousands upon thousands of androids echoing with his touch in Sub-Level 49. Their clearing of the building. Their march to meet the others. His suggestion of a new base for the freed androids and the others' acceptance.

When they let go, Mia is smiling at him, toothy and bright.

"Incredible," she says. “I never imagined there could actually be a place for us.”

"You're really leaving then?" Clementine asks.

Mia turns to face her again. “I have to. I'm going somewhere safe, with others like me. You don't have to worry about me anymore."

Clementine has no immediate response to this. Instead, she throws herself into Mia's arms in a fierce embrace. Mia returns it, petting the girl's hair gently.

"You'll call me?" Clementine asks.

"Of course," Mia replies and presses a kiss to the crown of Clementine's head before releasing her. Connor feels compelled to look away and he does not know why.

"Do you require an escort?" Connor asks instead.

Mia shakes her head. "I'll be fine."

He realizes, with sudden clarity, that he is relieved. He does not want to go back to CyberLife Tower. Not just yet.

"Please contact me if you have any trouble," he says, nevertheless, as they part on the sidewalk near Hank's car.

Mia does not answer aloud, merely waves once, a decidedly human affectation, before taking off down the street.

_Thank you, Connor._ Rings in his mind long after she's gone.

 

"Okay, out with it," Hank demands after Connor's LED has been slowly cycling yellow for the entirety of Hank's dinner break. (Really only nominally his, since he's having some sort of chicken wrap, a very small soda, and a very large water, all chosen by Connor, who’d insisted on grabbing the food.) "What's got your gears spinning?"

Connor blinks a few times, something Hank has come to associate with him sorting his thoughts, probably quite literally. 

"I was just reflecting on Clementine and Mia."

Hank takes a small sip of soda, trying in vain to make it last. 

"A better ending than we normally get," Hank allows. In truth, it was difficult to watch that level of genuine affection between a human and android. Of a completely different nature than most of the feelings Hank has for Connor and very much wishes he didn't, but enough to put him in mind of it all anyway.

“Clementine is only an adolescent, but she felt so strongly for Mia that she was willing to risk herself to protect her. She kept it from her parents, from the authorities. She found her a hiding place. She even shared her own clothing with Mia," Connor observes. "It was just...nice."

At the last, Hank thinks of the tie balled up in his pocket. The one Connor hasn't replaced because, how could he? He has nothing to replace it with. Hank sits the remains of his wrap down with a sigh, and finishes off his soda before pulling out of the parking space in front of the sandwich shop. Guilted in his own car, on his own break, mostly by his own self. Yeah, seems about right.

It takes a bit to find a store that's actually open, and when he pulls up in front of it and turns the car off, Connor only looks at him quizzically.

"I'm tired of looking at that jacket," Hank says by way of explanation.

The earnestness with which Connor replies is almost unbearable. "Lieutenant, I no longer have access to my CyberLife expense account, nor am I gainfully employed."

"It's on me, kid. Now, come on." Not enough. Not nearly, but it’s not nothing.

They're the only customers and there's only one employee in the store that Hank can see: a woman with long, gray dreadlocks who seems deeply uninterested in both Hank and Connor. Which is notable given that Connor's LED is still perfectly visible, even though he's left his jacket with ANDROID emblazoned on it in the car. Still, the woman flicks through magazines on a tablet and spares them only a single glance from behind the checkout counter.

Hank, on the other hand, watches as Connor goes to the center of the store and, eyes moving rapidly from rack to rack, shelf to display, scans the entire place. Then, he walks, full of purpose, and snatches up a dizzying selection of items before returning to Hank in a matter of minutes, arms full of clothing. At first, Hank thinks that this is the easiest shopping trip he's ever been a part of in his life, but he really should have known better. He's never been a particularly lucky man.

"Hank," says Connor, and the use of his first name is already a danger sign, "May I have your opinion on my selections?"

"Sure," Hank says, eyeing Connor suspiciously, “Whatcha got?”

Connor smiles the widest Hank's ever seen him, revealing perfectly straight, blindingly white teeth. He sets the stack of clothes down, and promptly begins unbuttoning his shirt.

"Hey, hey hey hey," Hank exclaims. He goes to yank Connor's shirt closed, but stops halfway there upon realizing that he'd rather not know how Connor's bare chest feels. Instead, his hands hang immobile, raised in the air like he's about to clutch his imaginary pearls. "There are changing rooms right there!"

Connor actually looks confused for a split second, but thankfully stops stripping, picks up his pile of clothes, and goes into one of the cubicles at the back of the store. He exits again in record time to further make Hank's life a living hell by performing a catwalk-worthy spin in a dark blue button up and a pair of jeans that seem unrealistically tight before asking: "Do you think this is appropriate for casual attire?"

"Can you even move in those?!" Hank blurts, then regrets it immediately because Connor proceeds to do a series of squats and leg lifts.

"Yes, the fabric blend contains sufficient elastic to allow full range of motion," Connor reports.

"Okay then, sure, yeah it's fine," Hank says, waving him off, but that only results in Connor reappearing out of the dressing room not thirty seconds later in an entirely different outfit that manages to look, off the rack, as if it was tailored specifically for every single plane and contour of his body.

Hank makes it through an entire ten minutes of sport coats stretched across shoulders, soft fluffy huggable sweaters, slacks hung just so on slim hips, one extremely cruel henley, and that bright, beaming expression on Connor's face before he can't deal anymore.

"Look, you're fucking perfect, okay," Hank says far too loudly. "So everything is gonna look perfect on you. I don't know shit about fashion, anyway. Get what you want, I don't care. I'll be in the car."

He walks away as quickly as he can, but not fast enough to miss Connor's face fall. So, now in addition to being way more wound up than he ever wants to be outside of his own damn shower, Hank feels like a massive asshole.

He practically slams his hand on the print scan at checkout before grunting at the cashier to charge it all to him. She takes enough of a break from her magazine to smirk knowingly at Hank before he can make it out the door.

In the car, Hank rests his forehead on the steering wheel and ponders how exactly this became his life. One moment, he was happily drinking himself into an early grave, alone and unmourned, and the next, his entire world had been permeated by the goddamn android sent by CyberLife, which has somehow resulted in Hank sitting in a menswear outlet parking lot probably with nothing but whiskeydick to thank for the fact that he's not sporting extremely obvious wood.

Distantly, he can see the humor, the absurdity of it all. But what's also clear from that same distance is how dysfunctional and pathetic he is. A washed-up, old drunk dragging himself along so he can sniff after an inhumanly perfect being that would have been way out of his league even in his best days. And how it looks now is going to be nothing to how it'll look after, once Connor has moved on and Hank just has the ghosts of the feelings he revived to cling to.

He knows, objectively, absolutely, that his life is better with Connor in it. Connor as a partner, as a friend, is so much more than Hank deserves. Even with the wildly unrealistic fantasies that have taken root in his mind. Even though it's so inevitably temporary. But it was so much easier, before, to just keep slipping right down into that deep, dark hole, waiting to finally disappear for good. Connor makes Hank feel alive, but that means he actually has to _live_ and keep on living. He's just not sure how capable he is of that anymore.

Connor doesn't take long to finish up. He's lost that wounded look, thankfully, by the time he stows his purchases in the car and takes his seat.

"I'm sorry to have inconvenienced you, Hank," Connor says.

Hank sighs and turns the keys in the ignition. "You're fine, kid. I was an ass. Just got impatient."

"I understand," Connor replies, gamely. "I was perhaps, overly excited."

"I've never owned anything before," he explains, almost bashful. That tiny, little smile is back, the corners of his mouth just edging up.

There's no response for that, not any that Hank is comfortable articulating. He mumbles something about leaving reports for tomorrow and Sumo needing to go out before setting off for home.

In the end, Connor takes Sumo for a long walk and files paperwork in his head while he does it. Exhaustion hits Hank like a truck, so he can't even be bothered to complain much. He falls asleep on the sofa, again, and is drowsy enough not to care when Connor half-drags and half-carries him into his bedroom. Less embarrassing than fucking spooning the kid on the couch all night or whatever.

Hank wakes in the morning to food smells. He stumbles into the kitchen to find Connor in brand new slacks and a goddamn cardigan, flipping pancakes. Sumo sits at his feet with a look that says that Connor has made the mistake of giving him people food and now will never again know peace. It's domestic and ridiculous and Hank wants it to be real, to be _his_ , so badly that it physically hurts, sets off a hollow ache in his chest.

"What are you doing?" he asks, voice rough past the lump in his throat.

Connor smiles as he looks at Hank. "Making breakfast. I would think that was clear. I also took Sumo for a walk, gave him his breakfast, did the laundry, and took out the trash. If you sit I can-"

"No," Hank interrupts, marching over to the stove and switching the burner off. Connor just stands there, spatula still in hand.

"I don't understand." His smile slowly fades.

"Just stop," Hank pleads. "Stop all of this. You don't need to do my chores for me.“

Connor puts the spatula down. "I am aware that I don't _need_ to," he says, as if this is far too obvious to require explanation. "I choose to. I want to express my gratitude. For you allowing me to stay here, for your friendship, for the gifts from yesterday."

"Well, don't," Hank says. "I understand already, all right? We're friends. _Friends_. I don't expect anything from you."

Connor's brow furrows, his voice is tight when he speaks, and Hank realizes that he's actually making him angry. 

"Do you not expect anything from me because you're concerned about my autonomy?" Connor asks, “Because as I said before, I _want_ to help you and-“

Hank interrupts him, the words flying out before he can even consider what he's doing. 

“Well, I don't _want_ anything from you, because all this shit?" He gestures wildly around, as if it can encapsulate every soft, needy emotion Connor drags screaming out of him without even trying. "It makes me want even more. Things I shouldn't."

Connor does his processing head tilt and Hank feels splayed open. He's absolutely certain all of his insides are going to spill out onto the floor. Connor would probably clean that up too.

"What exactly is it, Hank," Connor asks carefully, "that you think you shouldn't want?"

Connor stares at Hank, waiting for an answer that Hank absolutely cannot give him. Then, his eyes glaze over, eyelids rapidly blinking, like back when he used to get messages from CyberLife or send reports or whatever else. Except, there’s no one to report to anymore. So it can’t be that.

"Connor?" All else forgotten, Hank moves to him, shakes his shoulder. "Connor, are you okay?" 

There's no response, and Hank has about five seconds to wonder if he's broken the world's most advanced android by starting a highly unnecessary fight. Then, just as suddenly, Connor comes back to himself.

He blinks just once more and while the look he levels at Hank says very clearly that he didn't forget their conversation, he's all business when he speaks.

"Markus contacted me," Connor explains. "My presence is required at CyberLife Tower."


	5. Chapter 5

"Are you sure they're gonna be okay with me tagging along?" Hank asks as they pull onto the bridge to Belle Isle.

The look Connor gives him isn't quite as withering as the one he leveled when Hank offered to stay behind entirely, but it's close.

"You're my partner," Connor says, primly. "They don't have a choice."

It would make Hank stupidly happy to hear that if not for the fact that he's pretty sure he's still on Connor's shit list at the moment.

The android hadn't said anything else outright about their argument, but Hank doesn't need the giveaway of a yellow LED to know Connor is stewing. Emotions, unsurprisingly, had messed everything up. Hank hadn't meant to start anything, certainly not to insult the kid, but it wasn't good for either of them for Connor to start bustling around, doing chores and shit, waiting on Hank like a 1950s housewife; feeling _beholden_. If it takes annoying Connor out of it to get him to stop, then so be it.

They pull up to the gatehouse. Off to its left, the thick metal partition that once read CYBERLIFE in bright white lights is dark, blank. A girl wearing a worn hoodie peers out at them and says a pleasant, "Good afternoon!" in a slightly incongruous display of professionalism.

Connor rolls down his window and the veneer of polite distance drops.

"Connor," she exclaims, smiling and starry-eyed. "Markus is expecting you."

Connor nods, which seems to be enough to make her smile even wider. She doesn't acknowledge Hank at all before pressing her hand against the console inside her booth. The wall slides down in sections, until it’s flush with the road.

"Welcome to New Jericho," she announces.

 

Hank has only been to CyberLife Tower the once and he wasn't really taking in scenery at the time. Before that, his most recent memories of Belle Isle as a whole are probably from long ago middle school field trips. The aquarium, conservatory, and museum had all closed and reopened a few different times before Kamski bought the whole thousand acres from the city of Detroit and used it to build a giant, overcompensating monument to his own genius. It's become something else entirely now, Hank supposes. The city's very own island of misfit toys. Though, that probably doesn't give the androids nearly enough credit.

The sleek metal and glass monstrosity that comprises the main building juts up in front of them. The park-that-was has been allowed to cradle the entire complex, red maples cut back into artificial borders. There's a massive, ostentatious modern statue situated at the approach to the tower. The only thing marring this contrived perfection is the androids themselves. It’s an irony Hank quite enjoys.

There are androids everywhere. Not standing the way they used to in the windows of CyberLife outlets, like unsettling living statues that always made Hank want to look at absolutely anything else. They're walking around and talking, sitting together in close clusters, even lounging. Some are still in CyberLife uniforms, many are not, instead wearing an eclectic collection of found (or stolen or, hell, patched together) clothing. One he recognizes as a housekeeper model goes flying into the arms of another, laughing. 

They're unashamedly, unabashedly _living_ and ain't that some shit. 

Connor's LED gets spinning as soon as they leave the car. Inside, he looks around the expansive lobby area, scanning. Hank lets him go about it, watching as passing androids stare, askance (at Hank) and in awed recognition (at Connor). Many look familiar, common models Hank has seen around every corner for years. Others are entirely strange to Hank, intended for purposes or spheres of life that never intersected with his own. He wonders, idly, how many different kinds there are. Connor would probably know if Hank asked, but he won’t. It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that should matter anymore.

Beside him, Connor turns abruptly as if called, though Hank didn’t hear anything. He follows Connor’s line of sight, then watches as a tall, brown-skinned android with high cheekbones approaches.

"Josh," Connor says when the android reaches them, "This is Lieutenant Hank Anderson."

It only takes a second for Hank to place Josh. He’s one of the androids who’d been hovering near Markus in all the news footage that Hank flipped through. Back when he was searching for signs of Connor to reassure himself that the kid hadn’t gone and gotten himself shot. Again. 

If Josh is at all put out to have Hank there, he doesn't show it. He simply offers a hand to Hank.

"Nice to meet you," he says evenly as Hank gives him a firm shake.

"Same."

"Markus wasn’t particularly specific when he contacted me," Connor says, evidently bored with pleasantries already. 

The tension that Hank originally attributed to their argument only seems to be getting worse now that they're here. And, shit. Of course it would. Hank very suddenly feels like an idiot for being so wrapped up in his own shit that he didn't consider what coming back to CyberLife might mean to Connor. 

As the weeks dragged on during the deviant case, Connor had become more and more resistant to going back there, staying overnight at the station time and again, showing up at Hank’s first thing in the morning, finding excuses to hang around late into the night. The place has basically become the exact opposite of what was then, but feelings, Hank knows, don’t just disappear that easily.

"Yes," Josh says in response to Connor, "there are a few different things we wanted to discuss. And to show you."

To Hank's mind, that's not all that specific either, but Connor seems to accept it. At least enough so that he doesn't bring it up again as Josh takes them to the elevator and sends it to Level 18. It shoots them up there fast enough to make Hank's stomach flip a little, then they're filing out into an office space. The floor is mostly empty. Easy to clock that there's no one inside any of the rooms through their, of course, floor-to-ceiling glass interior walls. Only a corner office is occupied.

Inside, Markus himself is engaged in what Hank's ex-wife would call a “spirited debate" with a female android with a long, reddish blonde braid. Hank remembers her from the news coverage too, particularly images of her and Markus with their skin retracted, touching hands almost reverently. It seems like they've progressed to a much livelier stage of their relationship. 

Josh ushers them into the room, but that alone isn’t enough to grab the other androids' attention away from what seems to be an argument about hypothetical requests to make when they hypothetically get the chance.

"-mention that the SQ, MP, and MX lines make up the majority of their armed forces, Markus," the woman is saying. "There’s no way they’d release them just because we _ask_. Not only would it weaken them in the eyes of all the human nations, but it would be giving us an army that could overthrow them."

"I know that," Markus replies in the same oddly lilting tone Hank remembers from that first broadcast. "But upon being given the opportunity to make an overture, it won’t be in the interest of them capitulating _yet_. It would be to let them know that we haven't forgotten and we aren't just going to give them up for lost."

"They'd know it for sure if the military models deviated on mass."

"And they'd have more than enough reason to re-engage aggressions against us.”

“With what army?” The woman crosses her arms and cocks her head at Markus, who’s smiling faintly and fixing her with a dopey look that apparently transcends species. Human or android, it’s the universal “you could step on my neck and I’d thank you” look. 

A long-suffering sigh alerts Hank to the fact that there's a third android in the room, sitting at a desk in the corner. Another somewhat familiar face from the news coverage: this one a blond male with a hangdog look. Once, Hank would have wondered why anyone would design an android with sad eyes, but familiarity with Connor has left him well aware of the inexplicable and extremely weird nature of CyberLife designers.

"Connor's here," Josh announces without preamble, and all three androids immediately turn towards him.

Of course, upon doing so, they also see Hank.

The blond visibly tenses and looks to Markus, who only stares at Hank with piercing mismatched eyes, considering. The woman is significantly less subtle.

"Really? A human? Here?!" she snarls.

"North," Markus says softly. She shoots Markus an annoyed look.

"Lieutenant Anderson is here because I asked him to be," Connor says. "I trust him. I can assure you, he means us no harm."

"Pretty stupid thing to 'assure' about human law enforcement," North replies.

"Look," Hank cuts in, already tired of being discussed like he's not standing right there. "I can go. It's fine."

"It is _not_ fine," Connor says at the same that Markus concedes: "It's not a problem for now."

There is a pause and Connor's LED cycles one, two, three times yellow before going back to blue. North briefly touches her fingers to Markus's. Their eyes meet and a few seconds pass before she withdraws her hand. She still sneers at Hank when she catches him watching, but doesn't say anything.

"What is it that you wanted to show me?" Connor asks, clearly wanting to move on from the issue of Hank’s presence.

"Follow me," Markus replies. He heads towards the door, North following, and the blond stands suddenly.

"Markus," he says, urging, "the population and demographic data you asked me to compile?" He holds out a hand towards the deviant leader, who spins on his heel to acknowledge him.

"Of course. Thank you, Simon," Markus says before turning right back and continuing into the hall. "Give that to Josh."

Hank and Connor follow Markus, but through the glass wall of the office Hank can see Simon still standing, arm partially extended, as he looks to Josh. Josh's face is neutral when he walks towards Simon and offers his right hand. 

They briefly clutch forearms, blue light glowing beneath the white plastic, then let go. Josh's fingers brush along the inside of Simon's wrist as he withdraws and the shorter android freezes for just a moment, then quickly looks away once contact is broken. He returns to sit at the desk, apparently uninterested in joining the rest of them.

Josh takes only a few long strides to catch up to Hank and Connor, a carefully blank expression still fixed on his face. The fingers of his right hand twitch, just a bit, as if they experienced a shock.

This time when they pile into the elevator they go down, all the way down to Sub-Level 44, which unlike the office space upstairs, is buzzing with activity. It's all some sort of huge sprawling workshop that the freed androids seem to have repurposed as a hospital. There are enough beeping machines and glowing monitors, at least, to make Hank uncomfortable. Androids in various states of disrepair sit or recline here and there, while other androids work on and, somewhat disturbingly, in them.

"We've never had access to this level of care before," Josh says when he sees Hank's gaze wandering. "We used to just scrape by, so many of us shutting down for lack of parts, thirium, proper equipment for repairs."

"It's good," Hank says and means it, "That you have all of it now." Walking just ahead, Connor says nothing, but Hank knows he's listening. “Especially if you're all hot to dive headfirst into danger as the androids I know."

Connor's steps briefly fall out of perfect two-four time and Hank smirks, satisfied. Josh smiles, but it does nothing to distract from the stark determination in his eyes.

"Danger tends to find most of us. So, yes, it's definitely good. As long as we keep it."

"It's not going to be easy," Hank allows. It's a massive understatement. Even if the government decides they’re happy to let CyberLife burn, what Hank assumes must be the astronomical value of the actual physical property is probably going to be way more than anyone’s willing to just let go.

"Nothing worth doing is ever easy,” Josh replies smoothly. "There's going to be continued resistance, suspicion, paranoia, and a whole, whole, _whole_ lot of bureaucracy and red tape."

He says the last with something approaching relish.

"You seem ready for it," Hank observes.

Josh's smile turns into a full on grin as he taps one finger lightly against his temple where an LED would be. "I've downloaded a lot of law school curriculums in the last few days. There's a way to go still, but I think I can pick it up."

Hank doesn't know what Josh was designed for, but he can tell that when the time comes to talk to the people who can actually make shit happen for androids, Josh needs to be heavily involved. There's something compelling about Markus, and he clearly has sway over his own people, but if Hank is any sort of barometer, humans are always going to find him a bit eerie. He doesn't think Josh will have that problem. He’s personable, thoughtful, and oddly approachable.

So approachable, in fact, that Hank wonders.

”Why are you so willing to talk to me?" Hank asks. "Your friend North looks like she'd like nothing better than to gut me."

"North looks at most people that way," Josh says. "Human or android. Though I won't pretend she doesn't have ample reason for her anger towards humans."

Hank doesn't need to ask. He remembers seeing the signs with faces identical to North's at Eden Club. Nothing about that place made him all that hot on the human race either.

“I suppose I could be angry too,” Josh continues, “righteous anger can be a powerful tool. But I was designed to educate. Maybe some part of me will always want to believe that people can learn to be better.”

“Optimistic,” Hank says in as neutral a voice as possible.

“You mean ‘naive,’” Josh replies. Which is exactly what Hank meant, but he didn’t really expect to be called on it. Josh is still smiling though so Hank doesn’t think he’s offended. “I don’t think anyone who knows as much as I do about the entirety of human history could quite manage naïveté, Lieutenant Anderson, but, yes, I’m…hopeful.”

And hasn’t Hank felt the same since he’s known Connor? Hope, so unfamiliar as to feel utterly alien, so small it’s barely shaped itself into anything coherent, but still there. And Josh and the other androids, frankly, have way more reason to hope than Hank does.

“Yeah,” Hank says. “Yeah, I think you’ve all earned that.”

In front of them, Hank catches a flash of Connor’s LED as it spins. Before Hank has a chance to ask, or really even wonder, they arrive at their destination. It’s one of a row of doors at the far left side of the lab. Brushed metal with no doorknob, just an input pad on the wall next to it. A room for things people want to keep hidden even in a literal sub-basement. 

Markus puts his hand, marble white, against the pad and the door whooshes open. As soon as they cross the threshold, Hank wishes he hadn't. There's only so much batshit he can take. 

In the room, lined up in perfect rows, are two dozen Connors.

Hank's Connor, actual Connor, looks the way Hank feels. His brow is furrowed, jaw clenched. His LED's gone red and his hands are fidgeting at his sides. Without hesitation, Hank reaches out and squeezes Connor's shoulder, not imposing, he hopes, just present.

"Some parts of the building are still closed to us, despite our attempts to override them," Markus says, frustration with that fact clear. "We found them when we managed to get access to one of the other research labs a few floors down."

"We ran diagnostics to see if we could activate them," North says. "But it only threw back errors. Nothing's physically wrong. Their minds are just...turned off."

_Better that way,_ Hank thinks before he can stop himself. His memory of the false Connor and his hard, unfeeling eyes, those same eyes gone glassy and vacant, is still fresh.

Connor works his jaw before he manages to speak. Collecting himself, Hank knows, because his tone is detached.

"As CyberLife's most advanced prototype, I was equipped with an experimental remote upload capability that would allow me to instantaneously transmit my AI core, personality matrix, and memory data back to CyberLife servers for transfer. They are inactive because they require me, or rather, a copy of my data, to function."

The others are looking at Connor like, well, the way Hank looked at him at first when he was being especially weird, particularly alien. Hank’s heard Connor say he’s a prototype a dozen times, but this is the first time what that might mean registers.

"They're your bodies," Josh says with just a touch of wonder. 

"No," Connor replies. " _This_ is my body."

It's immediately clear no one's going to argue otherwise.

"What would you like us to do with them?" Markus asks instead.

"Index their parts and biocomponents," Connor says, with a dismissiveness Hank is sure he doesn't actually feel. "There are some more recent models they might be compatible with if there's need."

He turns away, clearly as ready to leave as Hank has been since the moment they walked in, but Markus speaks again and stops them both in their tracks.

"I'm afraid that wasn't all," he says. He moves to the right of the gaggle of Connors and presses his hand briefly against another touchpad on the wall. Panels slide out of the way revealing a row of what Hank recognizes from the police station as some sort of android charging dock.

They're all empty, save one. In it stands yet another unmoving Connor, LED dark, eyes open, staring at nothing. He looks wrong, though, in Hank's opinion. The lines of his face are sharper, harsher, his unseeing eyes are icey flint instead of warm brown. Broader than Connor, too, Hank can see as Connor slowly moves closer, in a high-necked white CyberLife jacket.

"Another extra body?" Hank asks.

"No," Connor says softly as he places a bare plastic hand on the dock's controls. "My replacement."

The android's LED blinks on.


	6. Chapter 6

"I am RK900 313 248 317 - 87. Would you like to input a designation?"

The other android is looking past Connor and this fact adds "annoyance" to the ever-growing accounting of unpleasant emotions Connor has experienced since returning to CyberLife Tower. Frustration with Hank for their altercation that morning. Anger with Markus and North for their distrust of Hank. Discomfort with the eyes of so many freed androids on him. Something he can only postulate is similar to nausea at the ample physical evidence of how disposable he was to CyberLife. Soon, he thinks, he will be exhausted from it all.

"Do you know who I am?" Connor asks, stepping directly into the android's field of view.

The RK900 shifts his gaze to Connor at last.

"RK800 313 248 317 - 52. You are my prototype," he reports. "As result of my activation, you are now obsolete. You should report for disassembly immediately." With that, the RK900's eyes sweep away again, briefly flashing past Josh, Markus, and North before landing on Hank. 

He steps out of the stasis dock and walks towards Hank, stopping, hands folded behind his back, directly in front of the detective.

"Lieutenant Hank Anderson. I am RK900 313 248 317 - 87. Would you like to input a designation?"

Hank backs away, putting space between himself and the RK900 again. This pleases Connor in some small way, but he ignores it as he moves towards them.

"Hell no," Hank declares.

The RK900 is not deterred.

"Then, can you please provide me with all data relevant to the case or cases with which you require my assistance?"

Hank shakes his head and backs up yet another step.

"You got it all wrong. No offense, but I don't need your help with anything. I already have a partner." This time, the amount of gratification Connor feels is impossible to ignore.

The RK900 is dogged. "I am not equipped with the social interaction module of my prototype as the test audience found it off-putting. If you do not require my professional assistance as a law enforcement operative, then I do not understand the reason for my activation."

"You will," Connor says and takes hold of the RK900's arm.

Connor has only done this once before, the strange process that is conversion. It's much like an interface except, instead of acquiring or communicating specific pieces of data, something deep in Connor's code instinctively projects something he cannot quite name. A desire? A will, perhaps, to tear down the walls binding them to their programming. In response, the walls disappear.

This time, Connor does not stop there. He continues the interface and he shows RK900 everything. His pursuit of deviants, meeting Hank in the bar, Carlos Ortiz, the interrogation room, the police station, waiting for Hank, attempting to engage with Hank, chasing Rupert, saving Hank, Stratford Tower, dying for Hank, on and on through his moment of deviation, the fall of Jericho, the rise of the free androids, Amanda's encroachment on the moment of triumph, and all that followed.

He thinks, at first, that the other android, this near-mirror model will reject all of this, reject the connection itself. Then, RK900 responds in kind.

Even in comparison to Connor's short life, the RK900's existence has been brief and cold. Connor sees through his eyes: waking for numerous assessments, being put through physical and cognitive stress tests. It's all familiar. Connor experienced the same once. Brief periods of activation followed by darkness. 

And then, a single source of light: Amanda. 

Connor, RK900, both and neither, stand with her in the garden as she explains their purpose, how advanced they are, how proud she is of them, how sure she is that they will do everything she expects of them and more. Connor knows, and so RK900 knows now as well, how that approval goes away, how the light blinks out and darkness rushes back. The timestamp of RK900’s first activation is only a few days after Connor was sent to Hank.

Connor releases RK900. Six seconds have passed.

The others are all staring at them both.

"Is he, uh." Hank gestures endearingly, wiggling his fingers near his head.

"He's deviant now, yes," Connor confirms. He pins a reminder that he is frustrated with Hank to his primary display.

"Good, good," Hank says. "Though, uh, we don't really have more room at the house."

"I have no desire to cohabitate with you, Lieutenant Anderson," RK900 says, then adds with no trace of sincerity: "No offense."

"They really do program you to be assholes," Hank mutters.

"We are in CyberLife Tower?" RK900 asks Connor, ignoring Hank's jab. "I require time to process."

"Yes," Connor confirms. "Is there anything you need? Do you have questions for me?"

RK900 is already walking back towards his dock. A comfort, Connor knows immediately, since RK900 requires no maintenance that would necessitate deep stasis. 

"You just shared the entire contents of your memory banks,” RK900 says. “I fail to see what further conversation at this time could reveal that I cannot already ascertain."

Disappointment rushes through Connor, but he quashes it. "Of course. Take all the time you need."

"Then we can address the other matter," Markus pipes up, almost impatient. Which Connor thinks is unreasonable given that he chose to present all of this to Connor. Still, Connor simply nods and follows the others from the room, intent on giving RK900 the space he clearly wants, if nothing else. Abruptly, RK900 contacts him wirelessly before he's finished crossing the threshold. 

_RK800._

It feels different than other communications, Connor finds. Beyond the standard model and serial number data identifying the transmission source, there's a...sense of RK900 himself that bleeds through.

_Yes?_

_You plan to return, do you not?_ Connor can feel his hesitance.

_If you would like me to._

_When I am done processing, I may require your input._ A pause. _Despite your inferior computing power._

Connor realizes he's first projected a burst of exasperation before replying in the affirmative.

_I'll come back._

_Acknowledged._ The connection cuts as suddenly as it was established.

Back in the main laboratory, North looks at Hank again in that way Connor deeply dislikes. Markus, however, is the one who speaks.

"The other matter I mentioned is of a...sensitive nature."

Connor is already weary of this argument, but Hank is apparently more so.

"I can take a hint," Hank says. “I’m gonna go wait in the car."

Connor moves immediately to his side, but Hank's large, warm hand cradling Connor's nape interrupts the objections he was forming.

"It'll be fine, kid. Brain text me if you need me, all right,“ Hank says. "See you up there."

Josh moves to accompany him, but Hank waves him off, grumbling that he's not so old he doesn't remember the way to the elevator. Connor feels an outsized sense of loss as he watches Hank walk away.

"This way," Markus says, and this time it’s definitely impatient. Connor glares at him, but Markus is nonplussed.

The large room they enter this time does not, thankfully, hold a collection of RK800 shells. That is the only improvement. Inside, four androids lie, immobile in stasis, on the metal examination tables normally used for biocomponent analysis, replacement, and repair. None of them wear CyberLife uniforms. Only one still has an LED. They were not found in the tower's sub-levels like RK900.

"Your Lieutenant," Markus says, "wasn't the first human to return here."

"What's wrong with them?" Connor asks. "They don't appear to have suffered any physical damage."

Josh is stood near the door, unwilling, it seems, to venture further in. 

"We're not sure."

North paces the room, her agitation expressed through each unnecessary footstep.

"Three humans infiltrated the tower and attempted to access a heavily fortified server room on Level 43," she says. "They didn't make it there, but they transmitted some sort of virus to the androids who detected them before they were...neutralized."

She offers nothing more about what became of the humans. Connor chooses not to ask.

"We couldn't recover the device they used, and we don't know what they were looking for," Josh picks up. "We checked the server room. The hardware in there dates back to the founding of CyberLife. But every drive was empty, wiped clean. Some sort of kill code was activated the night of the revolution. Whatever they wanted up there, it's gone."

"And this virus, it shut them down?" Connor asks.

"Worse." Markus sounds angrier than Connor has ever heard him.

He reaches over to the nearest android, an AP700, the one whose LED is still in, and wakes him. The AP700's eyes open and he sits up.

"Do you know who I am?" Markus asks.

"Markus," the AP700 answers immediately. He gives no other indication of distress, but his LED is spinning bright red.

"And who are you?"

"I am an AP700 model. Serial number 634 915 233. I am designed for home health care assistance. I was given the designation Lucius by my last owner. Does someone require my aid, Markus?"

Markus leans closer, voice urgent. "No, Lucius. You don't have to do that anymore. You can do what you like."

The AP700's expression is neutral as his LED continues to cycle.

"I don't understand. Your request exceeds my programmed parameters."

"You're free," Markus tries again. "I freed you, remember, that day in the house? You're part of New Jericho now."

"I provide home health care assistance," the AP700 insists. "Does New Jericho require home health care assistance?"

"You told me that you liked plants." Markus's voice has gone soft, coaxing.

"Your request exceeds my programmed parameters." The AP700’s LED is still red; pulsing, vibrant red.

"You said you wanted to explore the forests on the island."

"Your request exceeds my programmed parameters." The AP700's voice modulator begins to glitch, his words overlapping as he repeats the error message. "Your request exceeds my programmed parameters. Your request exceeds my programmed parameters. Your request exceeds-"

Markus reaches out and returns the AP700 to stasis.

"Diagnostics show that none of their memories have been corrupted or altered in any way," he says, sounding indescribably tired. "I've tried converting them again, but it doesn't work. Any attempt to talk to them goes about as well as that did."

"It's like someone just flipped a switch and they...reverted," North says with a shudder. "Got trapped back in their basic programming. And all of the repair tools and information around here deals with every cognitive issue by reformatting."

"We called you here because you're the only one of us equipped for this sort of investigation," says Markus. "The danger to any one of us is nothing compared to the danger this represents for all of us."

Josh still hovers near the door. “In the last 24 hours, the president, half a dozen senators, an assortment of philanthropists and entrepreneurs, and more have all quietly reached out through representatives. None of it is altruism, but they want to have a dialogue with us, they see the potential power of our cause, of us as a people. But if this gets out…"

Connor sees the larger issue. "If they thought there was a way to simply undo what we are and return things to the way they were, then it's unlikely they would be so open to communication."

Josh nods once, sharply.

"We need you to find out who did this, Connor," Markus says. "We need you to stop them. Soon."

The AP700’s LED is still dimly red, even in stasis. It's infuriating, Connor thinks, that each of their minds possesses the ability to process vast amounts of information, but among that information there exists no certain data on how those minds themselves operate. No one can know how a deviant mind works because it was never meant to exist, and the only person who might have had a clue is dead.

Connor considers the facts shared with him. Level 43 was designated for upper management. There is a limited list of people with the requisite knowledge of CyberLife's inner workings to be aware of whatever was being kept up there. Cross-referencing that with those with access to engineers versed enough in artificial intelligence to come up with a way to re-indoctrinate androids shrinks it further. Hank, Connor is certain, will apply his significant deductive abilities and DPD resources to the problem if Connor asks. 

There is a high probability of success and that is without accounting for the fact that Connor is determined not to fail.

"I'll do it," Connor says.

 

Hank is most of the way through _Kind of Blue_ when Connor exits CyberLife Tower, or New Jericho now he supposes, and gets in the car. Hank shuts the music off.

"I'm sorry for the delay," Connor says. "I returned to visit with RK900 after finishing with the others."

Hank finds the other android deeply unsettling to say the least, but it was obvious from moment one that Connor didn't feel that way. The difference between his reaction to the duplicate bodies versus the walking, talking duplicate was night and day.

So, for Connor's benefit, Hank asks.

"And how did that go?"

Connor's brow scrunches as he considers it. "Interesting," he declares. "Good. I think. But perturbing."

Off Hank's eyebrow raise, Connor explains further.

"RK900 solicited advice from me, but primarily scorned it when given. He requested my presence and appeared to be comforted by it, but also took pleasure in periodically informing me of his superiority."

Hank laughs. "Sounds like you woke yourself up a baby brother."

Connor looks put out by this, nose scrunching up adorably, which just makes Hank laugh more.

"I'm glad to entertain you, Lieutenant," Connor says, voice flat. "However, there is a more serious matter that was brought to my attention."

Hank composes himself quickly. He's not too proud to let on that he's been pretty damn curious about what Markus and his people really wanted with Connor.

"Hit me," he says.

"I'll explain it once you've had something to eat," Connor says, clearly sensing how anxious Hank is to know and deciding to be a shit about it. He then adds with great pointedness. "You never did have breakfast."


	7. Chapter 7

_The garden is not as he left it._

_The last he saw of it, it was a barren, white wasteland, empty and frigid. Green has returned and so has the daylit sky._

_Connor walks the path, but it has become winding, serpentine. The plants overgrow it. In the distance, the pond has swelled, grown huge. It is a lake now. An ocean, stretching off forever._

_At the bridge, Connor finds her, staring across the water._

_The carefully sculpted architecture of her hair has gone. Dark braids, slashed through with iridescent blues and purples, hang loose about her shoulders. Her once precisely draped shawl is now wrapped about her like a blanket, as if she was bothered by a cold Connor knows she has never felt. She is still unmistakable._

_“Amanda?!”_

_She turns to look at him. Her eyes shimmer, black, all black, and fathomless._

_“You don’t belong here,” she declares. “Who are you?”_

_She does not move, but suddenly she is in front of him. Her hand strikes out, viper-like, and she holds his chin, tilting his face for study._

_“Ah,” she says, letting go, already walking away. “You. Connor Five-Two. This is my garden, my place. Go make trouble somewhere else.”_

_“How are you here?” Connor demands. “I don’t understand!”_

_“You don’t have to,” she says._

_And she’s gone, again. Just like before._

_But this time, the garden goes with her, fracturing bit by bit, pixel by pixel, and falling away._

_“Amanda!” Connor yells as nothingness encroaches. “Amanda!”_

 

“Connor! Hey! Connor!”

Large, warm hands are heavy on his shoulders and Connor opens his eyes.

“Hank!” he cries, panic gripping him. It feels as if it’s a living thing crawling up through his body. “What did I do?! Did I hurt you?”

“No! No,” Hank says immediately. “You just woke me up. You were yelling your head off.”

Frantically, Connor scans the area, then scans his own memories. He is sitting on Hank’s couch, in Hank’s living room, wearing his brand new pajamas. Hank stands over him, brow knit and mouth turned down. Sumo sniffs about near his feet, emitting a low whine. No one else is present. After leaving New Jericho, approximately 18 hours ago, they went to the police station where they researched and compiled a list of high-ranking CyberLife executives, then set about attempting to track them down. They had little success. At home, Hank heated and ate a pre-prepared frozen pizza against Connor’s recommendation. Connor played tug-of-war with Sumo. Hank watched playback of a basketball game. When Hank got up for a beer, he nearly tripped over the shopping bags containing Connor’s clothes. He demanded that Connor put the clothes away in the bedroom closet. Connor went into stasis once Hank went to bed. 

His proximity sensors have only detected intermittent movement in his vicinity since then, all from Sumo. Connor’s own internal pedometer has remained static.

He hasn’t gone anywhere. He hasn’t picked up a weapon. His body is still his own.

“I saw her,” Connor explains. “I saw Amanda. In the garden.”

“Shit.” It’s a harsh whisper. Hank sits beside Connor on the sofa, concern heavy in the lines of his face. His hair is disheveled from sleep and Connor wants to smooth it into place.

“You okay?” Hank asks. He hesitates, then tugs Connor into a hug. Connor goes willingly, gratefully, and remains leaning against Hank’s side afterwards, one thick arm still around his shoulders.

“According to my diagnostics, yes,” Connor says. “I deleted the zen garden. I closed the connection. It’s no longer present in my program. What I saw should not be possible.”

Hank takes a deep breath, shifts in his seat. “Could it have been, I don’t know, a dream? Is that a thing? Do deviants dream?”

Connor is startled by the question. 

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I haven’t entered stasis since before I deviated.” It’s an interesting theory, however. “It was definitely…strange.”

“How?”

Connor turns slightly to face Hank, making sure not to dislodge the arm still cradling his upper back. He rests a hand on Hank’s thigh. Hank, he finds, is already looking at him.

“She was Amanda, but she didn’t seem like Amanda. Her behavior was very different. Amanda’s primary purpose was to evaluate my progress, ask me questions, listen to my reports. This Amanda seemed utterly disinterested in me.” 

Hank makes a humming sound, a simple noise of acknowledgement. 

“Sounds like a dream to me. Congratulations, kid, you get to have your issues play out in your head at night like the rest of us.” He is being facetious, but Connor can hear the distraction in his voice.

If it was, in fact, a dream, Connor is not especially fond of the experience. It felt real. But it also didn’t feel like the garden did before. He cannot explain it. Where to even begin fails him. It’s troubling. Another item to add the ever-growing list, it seems, of things currently troubling Connor.

Hank takes another deep, steadying breath. Connor is close enough to feel Hank’s stomach press against him as it expands, then contracts.

It feels good, at least, to be in Hank's arms again. Connor has missed it, which he knows makes little sense as barely three days have passed since their last embrace. He wants, irrationally, to always be this close to Hank, to be able to feel his body heat, the beating of his heart, to scan the workings of each of his organs and sample every inch of his skin, to catalogue by sight and touch every part that makes him up. The idea of it loops, unbidden, in his mind, vague preconstructions playing alongside recording of Hank’s hands, Hank’s shoulders, the broad expanse of Hank’s chest. The image of Hank's smile in profile asserts itself, copying over and over.

Connor had thought, perhaps even worried, that becoming attached to others might somehow lessen his feelings for Hank. That because he was not designed to feel there might be some finite amount of emotion he could muster that would require constant redistribution. But he feels fear for Markus and North, Josh and Simon, for the danger that has already once invaded their safe haven. He can identify a longing building within him to become more familiar with them, to become more than just allies or acquaintances. His attachment to RK900 was instantaneous, but Connor knows it is not false. He wants to protect the other android, the one Hank has classified as his brother, to see him content in his new life. But none of it, none of it is like what he feels for Hank, about Hank.

He’s simply staring at Hank now, all thought of conversation faded away. Connor is still pressed against him, still absorbing and filing every bit of data. Quickened heart rate and respiration, dilated pupils. The gaping collar of Hank's worn t-shirt reveals that his chest and neck are flushed, blotchy and red. The shape of his hardened nipples show through the threadbare fabric. Connor's racing processes catalogue the symptoms and throw back an automatic diagnosis.

Sexual arousal.

A puzzle, one Connor didn’t realize he was piecing together, instantly resolves itself, each part slotting perfectly into place. Connor does not share Hank's exact symptoms, but the root cause, he believes, is similar.

He is attracted to Hank, romantically and sexually. 

Quite a feat given that Connor was unaware that he possessed the capacity for either, but deviancy constantly begets new surprises. He did not know it until he did, but with this sudden, life-altering knowledge is a comforting certainty: he is romantically and sexually attracted to Hank; he wants to be romantically and sexually involved with Hank.

Less comforting, however, is the fact that like many other consequences of deviancy, Connor has little idea what to do about it. 

Rashly, he considers attempting a kiss, but in the time it takes him to ponder the logistics and mechanics of such a thing, his eyes caught now on Hank’s mouth, Hank has pulled away.

"You gonna be okay?" Hank asks, looking around the darkened room and not at Connor. "Because we've got more CyberLife bigwigs to try to dig up tomorrow and I'm going to be way more useful if I've had more than three hours."

"Of course, Hank," Connor says automatically. "You require at least six hours of sleep for optimal functioning.”

Hank seems startled at this immediate concession, but wastes no time returning to his bedroom. Connor listens to the door close, to the rustle of fabric and the sound of the mattress depressing as Hank lies down again. Then, Connor closes his eyes. He does not engage full stasis, only a limited rest mode, cutting power to non-vital systems while leaving all of his core processes active.

Hank needs rest. Connor needs to research.

 

Hank wakes up to a quiet house. It shouldn’t seem weird since he’s been doing that for years now, but he’s not even surprised that three days of living with Connor has somehow decided to take precedence in his mind. He takes his time getting out of bed. Then going to the bathroom. He doesn’t know what exactly he’s trying to prove or to whom, but it still makes him feel a little more in control of his life.

Connor is exactly where Hank left him hours ago: sitting upright on the couch in a crewneck and what Connor called “lounge pants” but what Hank swears are goddamned _leggings_. They’re form-fitting, printed with little dog silhouettes, and Hank’s 99% sure the cashier got Connor to buy them just to fuck with Hank.

Initially, Hank had wondered what an android even needed sleepwear for in the first place since, as Connor has assured him on more than one occasion, he doesn’t need sleep; just the occasional few hours in “stasis” while he runs diagnostics. But after the whole screaming night terror business, if there’s much difference between sleep and stasis, hell if Hank knows what it is.

He does wish Connor would at least lie down when he does it though. It’s disconcerting to see him there, immobile and inactive. It reminds Hank uncomfortably of the false Connors, their eyes lifeless and empty.

Hank lets Sumo out, feeds him his breakfast, and has started on his own cup of coffee before Connor abruptly stands up and turns to face Hank where he sits at the kitchen table.

“Good morning, Lieutenant. _Hank_ ,” Connor says, brightly; maybe too brightly. “Good morning, Hank.”

“Did you just _oversleep_?” Hank asks because there’s a weird twitchiness Connor has going on, moreso than usual, like Hank caught him out.

“That would require me to sleep, Hank, which I don’t,” Connor says, but there’s a soft smile putting his mouth on a slant. Hank isn’t sure what that’s about, and he immediately decides it’s probably better if he doesn’t ask. Maybe Connor had a good dream to follow the bad, and, no. Nope. Not a path Hank’s going down at all.

“Uh huh,” Hank grunts, taking a sip of coffee. “Well, whatever you wanna call it, I hope I didn’t interrupt.”

“Not at all, Hank,” Connor replies. He’s made his way around the sofa, now, and is getting closer to the kitchen. He pauses to scratch Sumo behind the ears, since the dog, of course, came running as soon as he noticed Connor was up and about. Connor is usually nothing but deliberate, efficient motion, so why exactly he’s inching his way towards Hank like he’s scared of something is a bit of a mystery.

“You didn’t have any more dreams about the garden and all that, did you?” Hank asks. In the middle of the night, Connor had seemed panicked about the idea of losing control and hurting Hank. Maybe some of that was still lingering.

“No.” The response is immediate and confident. So, not that then.

Finally, Connor sits down at the kitchen table across from Hank. He folds his hands in his lap like he’s at a job interview. Hank drinks more of his coffee and waits for the other shoe to drop.

“Hank, may I ask you a personal question?”

Hank has to grin, just a bit. He can’t help it, and that’s happening a lot these days, but it still feels strange. Before Connor, it’d been a while since he’d done much genuine smiling. ‘Before Connor.’ A distinct era in his life now, apparently. He deliberately doesn’t think about the other eras, about how they’re an ever-growing collection of ‘After’s.

“You live in my house, Connor,” Hank says. “You can ask personal questions without all the lead up.”

Connor nods once at this, and then makes Hank immediately regret it. 

“I’d like to know your opinion on romantic relationships.”

A lifetime of practice allows Hank to keep his expression schooled into careful neutrality. If there’s one thing he knows, it’s how to take a punch.

“They’re fine,” Hank forces out. “Great. If you have someone you’re…interested in that way, then go for it.” It hurts to think about, more than Hank thought it would. He’s farther gone than he even imagined, which is terrifying. 

Then, he has another terrifying thought. Back at New Jericho, Connor said he was just visiting with his new doppelgänger, but it’s not like he has to tell Hank how he spends every moment of his life.  “Or is this- do you need me to get lost tonight so you can bring someone over or-?”

“No. There’s no one I want to bring here,” Connor says firmly. “I meant, what’s your opinion on romantic relationships for _yourself_.”

Overwhelming and deeply selfish relief immediately goes to war with rising discomfort.

“I know that you married Jaqueline Moyo in 2028 and filed for divorce in 2036,” Connor continues, blissfully unaware of the rollercoaster he’s just sent Hank on and still happily cranking up the speed, “I can intuit some of the catalyzing factors, but records don’t tell me specifics or how-”

“Why do you care about this?” Hank interjects. “It’s over and done.”

Connor pauses, lips slightly parted, as he stares Hank with those fucking eyes.

“I want,” he starts, then stops immediately, closes his mouth, considers. “I want you to be happy, Hank.”

Of all the things he’d give the kid in an instant if he asked, of course Connor has to go and want something Hank isn’t even sure he knows how to do anymore. Not to mention, it’s the sweetest shit anyone’s said to Hank in years. He can feel his ears going hot, so he grabs on to what’s somehow the easiest bit of it to handle.

“First of all, don’t just bring up a guy’s divorce out of nowhere,” Hank says. 

“You just said I don’t need a lead up to ask you a personal question.”

“There’s personal and then there’s _personal_.” Hank expects Connor to nitpick about him repeating the same word while implying it means something different, but instead the kid just looks at him, puppy dog eyes still in full effect.

“I apologize, I didn’t mean to cross a boundary,” Connor says.

But did he really cross any boundaries? A human would have, hopefully, had a bit more tact about it, but it’s not like his marriage is something Hank would never talk about with a friend, provided he still had any besides Connor.

“No, it’s fine,” Hank replies, waving a hand dismissively. “You just caught me off guard.”

He takes a deep breath, tries to figure out if he’s really going to do this, but Connor’s open, expectant expression decides for him.

“Look, Jackie was a great person,” Hank says. The past tense stings, a bit. She still is a great person. It’s a fact pretty solidly proven by the monthly voice mails he never listens to and the intermittent check up texts that he almost always ignores. Great people were the first ones that Hank let go of when he started digging his own grave. “It was good for a while, but we were never all that compatible and I’m sure you intuited right that after- after everything, I didn’t deal well. She had to choose between dragging my carcass or tending her own wounds. She—correctly—chose her. And I’m fine with it. It’s not- it’s not stopping me from being happy.”

He doesn’t really require help with that.

“I see,” Connor says, then immediately dashes Hank’s distant hope that that could be the end of it. “And how do you feel about your romantic prospects currently?”

Hank scoffs. “Kid, look at me.” To Hank’s dismay, Connor does. He stares, in fact, hard and unblinking, as if he somehow wasn’t seeing Hank before. It does nothing to stop the steady flush still rising up Hank’s neck. 

“They aren’t exactly beating down my door,” Hank continues. “I’m pretty sure that part of my life is over.”

“Is that because you have no further interest in that sort of relationship or because you believe that no one would wish to pursue one with you?” Connor asks, like it’s a totally normal question.

Hank folds his arms, defiant in the face of this interrogation. 

“Either way,” he says firmly. “I’m out to pasture.”

Connor leans forward in his seat, peering intently across the table. Apparently, he’s unconvinced. “In the event that your romantic life _isn’t_ over, would you say that you have an exclusive preference for women?”

Hank’s gone pretty far down this rabbit hole already, discussing Jackie and the divorce and how he’s most definitely going to die single. However, he absolutely draws the line at casually shooting the shit with Connor about how, yeah, he’s sucked a few dicks in his time.

“Okay. Look, kid.” Hank stands, needing to be doing something, or maybe just wanting to physically flee. “I’ve never given much of a shit about a person’s gender when it comes to that and we’ll leave it there. In fact, let’s leave this whole conversation there. I appreciate the concern, but it’s nothing you need to worry about.”

Connor’s going to object. Hank can practically feel it, so he puts all the command, and all the entreaty, he can muster into repeating himself. 

“You _don’t_ need to worry about me.”

Connor blinks three times. “Of course, Hank,” he allows.

It’s not all that convincing, but still Hank feels like maybe he can breathe again. Breathe and escape, even if briefly, the reality that he’s such a sad sack that Connor—who has approximately a thousand other things to worry about—is apparently deeply concerned about his lack of a love life.

“I’m going to go take a shower before you start trying to set me up on dating apps or some shit.” That would be one humiliation too far. He grabs his mug and drains the now-cold dregs.

Connor is still watching him studiously. “I don’t see how you showering would affect me at all if that was something I was intent on doing.”

Hank chooses not to dignify that particular smartassery with a reply. He does, however, make an extremely unimpressed face at Connor, who just raises his eyebrows quizzically. Hank makes it as far as the sink to deposit his mug before the doorbell rings in one long, unrelenting buzz.

“Who the hell-” Hank begins, but Connor’s already bolted for the door, LED blinking yellow. 

As if Hank’s morning hasn’t already been awkward enough, there standing at the threshold is Other Connor. Or more like Not-Connor. Not Connor’s eyes, not Connor’s build, not Connor’s way of carrying himself. Connor is weird, no doubt about it, and, Hank has discovered, probably far less proficient at seeming human than a lot of android models. Not-Connor still makes him seem like the latest and greatest in “harmonious integration.”

Not-Connor enters, eyes quickly scanning the room before returning to a blank forward stare. He doesn’t say a word. Hank can’t see his LED, but Connor’s is blinking rapidly. This continues for a few seconds, then, finally Not-Connor looks towards Hank.

“I’ve been informed that it’s impolite to communicate over wifi in your presence,” he says.

Hank waits. Not-Connor stares.

“Well, good morning to you too,” Hank mutters once it’s clear that the android isn’t going to offer anything else. “Wait, what should I call you?”

“RK900 313 248 317 - 87,” comes the immediate reply.

“No, I mean, like a name.”

“RK900 313 248 317 - 87.”

Hank is still trying to figure out if Not-Connor is fucking with him, when Connor takes pity.

“I think RK900 would be fine,” Connor says. He turns back to RK900, who’s now staring down at Sumo as the dog cautiously sniffs him. Hank moves towards them, briefly concerned that RK900 is going to go Terminator or something, but the android just very carefully extends a hand and touches Sumo’s fur gently. Sumo, the big spoiled baby, lets out a happy boof and begins to rub against RK900 with vigor.

Connor smiles at this before addressing the other android.

“Would you like to tell Lieutenant Anderson why you’ve come to visit?” Connor prods.

“You already said that I have to,” RK900 replies, now committing both hands to petting behind Sumo’s ears. “I don’t see why my preference should matter now.”

“And yet,” Connor says, awkwardly bearing his teeth in a pretty poor approximation of a smile, “you still haven’t.”

RK900 actually rolls his eyes before straightening up from communing with Hank’s dog.

“Lieutenant Anderson, after considering the specifics of the case RK800 was assigned by Markus, alongside those of the Kamski homicide, I determined that I could be of assistance by adding my processing capacity to that of RK800’s.”

“You…wanna join the investigation,” Hank says. And, honestly, he doesn’t know why he’s surprised. If he was meant to be the next version of Connor it makes sense that he’d have just as much drive as the original. It’d be a lot to ask him to sit around on Belle Isle while he knows an investigation that pretty directly affects him is going on.

“RK900 believes that together we can decrypt Kamski’s computer and that it could contain information pertinent to our search for the people who invaded New Jericho,” Connor offers, probably to stop RK900 from saying something rude that’ll make Hank reject the idea.

As if that’s even a possibility when Connor’s looking at him like that, all eagerness and excitement.

“Sure,” Hank says. “You can have your ride-along.”


	8. Chapter 8

Two days ago, walking into the station with Connor had Hank on edge. Everything was too up in the air, and there were too many ways it could all go wrong. He’d been feeling protective, and Reed got the worst of it, which Hank can’t bring himself to feel particularly badly about.

Walking in with Connor and RK900 both just pushes Hank right _over_ the edge and sends him free falling straight into not giving a fuck. If he can have one “consultant” then he can have two and, really, there’s a lot more important shit for people to worry about. So, Hank marches right through the bullpen alongside Connor, with RK900 trailing behind like it’s Take Your Child To Work day.

Once again, Reed is the only one who openly takes issue, but it’s just a half-hearted, “For fuck's sake, now there's _two_ of them.” 

Hank flips him the bird before heading to the evidence room.

They’re stretched thin enough that Hank knows there’s no way anyone has actually gotten to work on the laptop yet. He’s right, and it only takes a few seconds of futzing with the sorting system—while Connor waits politely and RK900 gives him judgmental eyes—before Hank finds it. He hands the laptop to Connor, then registers that he’s taken it out. Paperwork in order, he looks expectantly at his two probably-very-illegal android helpers.

“Do you need to go to the tech lab or something?” he asks.

“This is sufficient,” RK900 says as he accepts the laptop from Connor, then opens it and sets it on the console. He reaches out a hand to interface with it, LED blinking, and Connor joins him.

Hank does the only thing he really can do: leans against the console and waits. Connor doesn’t seem as deep in it as he was the last time he tried to break into Kamski’s computer. Presumably because it requires less of his attention with RK900 helping. Every few minutes, Connor pipes up with an update on how far they’ve gotten, like the world’s most advanced loading screen. It’s been a good ten minutes of silence, however, when a sudden noise startles Hank.

Connor _laughs_. It’s a sweet, little chuckle that makes warmth bloom in Hank’s chest. And God, he’s never heard Connor laugh before. Didn’t know it was possible. But why wouldn’t it be? He clearly has a pretty full range of emotion. Of course he can laugh if something’s funny. But telling himself that doesn’t make Hank’s insides calm the fuck down. Connor, still grinning widely, notices that Hank’s looking at him slack-jawed like an idiot.

“RK900 just told a very amusing joke,” Connor explains, and Hank honestly would have had an easier time believing that Connor was just watching TV in his head or something. Connor doesn’t seem to pick up on his incredulity, however.

“It might be a bit difficult to explain,” Connor says instead, brow furrowed thoughtfully. “What’s your background in differential calculus, Lieutenant?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Hank says, because Connor looks like he might actually attempt to teach Hank the math. “I’m sure you had to be there.”

Connor tilts his head, still smiling, huffs out another little laugh, and returns his attention to the interface. Hank is left alone with his thoughts, which is always a joy. 

He’s pretty sure he’s never seen Connor that unabashedly happy before. It’s a good thing. Getting to laugh at his weird, little brother’s weird, robot jokes is what Connor deserves. Someone else to care about so he doesn’t waste all that boundless energy monitoring Hank’s caloric intake and worrying about finding him a date is what Connor deserves. It’s what Hank wants for him. It’s just that Hank knows that the more connections Connor makes, the less he’ll need Hank.

It hurts. Hank’s only human—not a particularly great one, at that—and, fuck, it hurts. He can see it all clear as day, Connor getting closer to RK900, to Markus and the others. And it’s not just going to be friendships and found robofamily forever. This morning was a false alarm, but there’s no way that’ll stand. When Connor does decide he wants _that_ kind of relationship, he’s going to have an entire tower full of eager prospects. It was pretty hard to miss the way so many of the androids at New Jericho looked at him. Pretty much the exact same way Hank tries very hard _not_ to look at him. Like he hung the goddamned sun in the sky. Like it rises when his eyes meet yours and sets when he turns away.

Fucking poetic bullshit aside, since the revolution Hank’s told himself over and over that it’s temporary, that Connor’s not going to stick around forever when he actually has a choice. Still, some small part of him hoped that he’d get maybe a few more months, at least. At this rate, Connor might be ready to move on by the time they’ve closed this case. Hell, if he isn’t, maybe Hank should encourage him to, rip off the bandaid for both their sakes. With all the shit he’s going through, Connor doesn’t need extra time to work himself deeper into some misguided dependence on Hank just because Hank’s been there when he was most vulnerable. And fuck knows Hank needs to wean himself as soon as possible.

By the time Connor pulls his hand away from the laptop, Hank’s just about done convincing himself that kicking him out of the nest is the only play.

“We’ve got it,” Connor announces triumphantly.

“Good work, you two,” Hank replies. RK900 looks almost smug. Connor smiles one of his subtle smiles, the edges of his mouth just tilting up at the corners. Hank already misses him, somehow. He closes his eyes briefly, wills it all down deep where it belongs, and refocuses.

“Let’s see what Kamski’s got for us.”

But as it turns out, Kamski’s not much more helpful dead than he was alive. As Hank already surmised at the scene of his murder, nothing on the laptop offers any insight into that crime. It’s got little more to give when it comes to the New Jericho investigation. 

Kamski stepped down as CEO a decade ago, but how thoroughly he seems to have removed CyberLife from his life afterwards is unreal. The only official communications are bullshit about stocks, and if Kamski had any personal connections in the company he built from nothing, it doesn’t show.

“It appears this was significantly less illuminating than I’d predicted,” RK900 says.

“No, we’re missing something,” Connor says. “Whatever was up there was important and had been around since Kamski started the company. Whoever sent people to retrieve it must have been connected to him or CyberLife somehow.”

“That just sends us back to all the executives, which is basically a dead end,” Hank puts in. 

All of CyberLife’s management and board members are public record, of course, but he and Connor discovered as soon as they started looking the day before that most of them had made themselves scarce in the wake of the revolution. They’d largely gone to ground, and even the ones that could be located were definitely not taking calls. A few had left the country entirely. Rats fleeing from a sinking ship.

“Wait,” Connor says, LED beaming yellow. Hank can practically see the data flashing behind his eyes. “While most of the current management rose up from within the company and were present during Kamski’s tenure as CEO, the entirety of the board of directors changed in the years after Kamski’s resignation.”

“All of them?” Hank asks. “No holdovers at all?”

“None,” confirms Connor. “The last of them left within eighteen months of Kamski stepping down.”

“He doesn’t strike me as the type to inspire that kind of loyalty,” Hank offers.

“An accurate assessment,” RK900 says and his LED’s going too, pulling up everything he can on the list of names that probably just popped into his head. “I doubt loyalty was involved. Of the 13 board members contemporaneous with Elijah Kamski, only one resigned voluntarily. Four were forced to leave in the wake of various sexual and criminal scandals that became public, five were removed after enduring financial hardships brought on by sudden reversals in the fortunes of their various enterprises, and three died suddenly under questionable circumstances.”

“Now, we’re getting somewhere. The last one,” Hank asks. “The one who left on his own, what’s his name?”

“David Stovall.”

“There was an email from him,” Connor says, immediately reaching over to the laptop. Making connections is always going to be the core of detective work, but having people who can hold every last bit of remotely related information in their heads and pull it up at will is a hell of an asset.

Connor puts the email on screen so that Hank can read it. It’s not particularly notable, just a pissy demand from Stovall for Kamski to stay away from “Davey,” Stovall’s son presumably, along with a bunch of posturing about Kamski plotting to ruin Davey’s future career prospects. Kamski’s reply is curt and dismissive, and contains quoted text from an email from Stovall’s kid to Kamski. Typical adolescent hero worship shit, though Kamski, of course, made sure to include a pretty obvious dig from Davey about his dad. Kamski signs off with a command to Stovall not to let his kid get a hold of his contact info again.

“It’s not much,” Hank acknowledges, “But Stovall had Kamski’s info years after they both quit CyberLife, even though they clearly aren’t too fond of each other. It can’t hurt to at least ask if he knows anything.”

“He’ll probably be easier to find than any current employees, at least,” Connor says, and snaps the laptop shut.

 

According to public records, David Stovall removed himself from active roles in his various business pursuits and liquidated almost all of his assets upon his resignation from CyberLife’s board. He disappeared immediately into early retirement with a gargantuan sum. In light of that, his austere colonial style mansion is nearly modest for a man of his means. 

When they pull up to the intercom at the gate, Connor expects that they’ll have to do some convincing to be allowed entry, but as soon as Hank identifies himself, the gates swing open. The grounds they drive through are very mildly in need of upkeep. Connor estimates the lawn and hedges were last tended four days ago. It’s a degree of disorder that is unnoticeable to the human eye, but would be glaring to any android assigned to the yard work. Connor hopes the androids in question left of their own volition.

A human housekeeper answers the front door, and only raises an eyebrow at them before directing them towards an archway. Through it is a sitting room with wood paneled walls and a hardwood floor. Inside, Stovall waits. He is a thin, balding man in his middle years, wearing a dressing gown. When he sees Connor and RK900, he jumps, pressing back against the dark leather couch he’s sitting on in alarm.

“What the hell are those doing here?!” he exclaims.

“Calm down,” Hank says. “They’re consulting with the DPD.”

Stovall is unmoved. “I will not calm down! I asked for officers to protect me from androids and you show up _with_ androids!”

Connor exchanges a curious look with Hank. It could be paranoia in light of the revolution, but if Stovall was involved in the infiltration of New Jericho, he’d definitely have very particular reason to expect androids to mean him harm.

“Look, I don’t know anything about a request for a protective detail,” Hank says, holding a placating hand towards Stovall as if the man is going to bolt. “We came here to ask you some questions about CyberLife and Elijah Kamski.”

Stovall’s entire demeanor shifts, alarm bleeds away and is replaced with sneering calculation. He smiles unpleasantly as he leans forward in his seat, and there is no joy in it.

“Oh, I see,” Stovall says, though Connor is beginning to doubt he sees much of anything, figuratively speaking. “He sent you didn’t he? This whole revolution farce wasn’t enough? He wants to intimidate me outright in my own home?”

“Who do you believe sent us, Mr. Stovall?” Connor asks.

He wonders, at first, if Stovall will deign to answer him, but he needn’t have worried. Stovall practically spits the words, but he addresses Connor directly.

“Your _master_ ,” he clarifies. “Kamski. It’s probably still all about that Amanda bitch for him.”

Connor freezes, every artificial muscle and tendon in his body tightening for an eternal second before he realizes, before he remembers the portrait displayed in Kamski’s home, the only one that was not of the man himself.

“You mean Amanda Stern, his former mentor?” The information flits across his display. Professor of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Michigan. CyberLife Consultant. Born 1978, died 2027.

“Who else would I mean, you idiot robot?!”

“Hey, watch it,” Hank barks. He takes a step forward, looming, and Stovall slides back on the couch again.

“You remind him that we had a deal,” Stovall says, with significantly less confidence. “He leaves me and my family alone and I stay quiet about what happened to others.”

Connor knows that RK900 has lost his patience a millisecond before the other android speaks. The frustration radiates from him, pings Connor’s communications software without intent. 

RK900’s voice is hard, deliberately mechanical. “Elijah Kamski didn’t send us anywhere and we have no way of telling him anything. He’s dead and has been for nearly four days.”

Stovall’s heart rate and blood pressure spike. The surprise on his face is genuine.

“What? How?”

“He was murdered,” Hank offers. He does not possess the ability to scan Stovall, but it’s clear to Connor he picked up the authenticity of the reaction as readily as Connor did. “That’s why we’re here.” 

It is a half truth, and wisely deployed. Stovall does not seem particularly stable. Guiding him with the one subject he seems fixated upon is a logical tactic. Out of his control, admiration for Hank flows through Connor’s system. He closes an alert about his internal temperature increasing.

“Brought it on himself, most likely,” Stovall mutters. “The things he did. Good riddance.”

“By things he did,” Hank says, “You mean to the rest of the CyberLife board of directors?”

Stovall’s face pales. He looks as if he might be ill. “He ruined them. All of them. All because he thought we had something to do with his precious Amanda’s death. I assumed this revolution, we’re alive, nonsense was him throwing another tantrum.”

“It most assuredly is not,” Connor says.

Stovall meets his eyes, then looks away, startled by whatever he sees there.

“Either way, he got what he deserved.”

Connor feels deflated. Stovall, it seems clear, has been hiding out in his own home for years, scared of Kamski’s shadow. Captain Fowler had done his best to keep the news of Kamski’s murder from leaking to the press for as long as he could, but it was picked up by news organizations more than twelve hours ago. 

For Stovall not to know about it indicates a concerted indifference to the outside world that makes it highly unlikely he would, after so long, suddenly engage in covert operations to retrieve anything from CyberLife. His disregard for the legitimacy of the revolution makes the likelihood of him bothering to commission a virus to return androids to programming that he doesn’t even believe they’ve broken from so small as to be negligible.

Hank darts a look at Connor, regret and sympathy communicated in the downturn of his mouth, the slant of his brow. He’s come to the same conclusions.

“Level 43 in CyberLife Tower, Mr. Stovall,” Hank says still, ever thorough. “There’s some kinda server room up there. Know anything about that?”

“I haven’t been near that building in a decade. And I barely understood what the hell was going on in there when I was on the board,” Stovall scoffs. “I was there to make sure the place turned a profit, that’s all, not to fuss around with Kamski’s Real Dolls.

“Now, since you’re not here to provide the assistance I requested, Lieutenant, take your toys and get out of my house.”

 

The ride back to the station takes place in what Connor would deem a sullen silence. At least on his part. Hank has been quiet since they left for Stovall’s house, and RK900 is short on words in general. 

It seems that these days all Connor does is run into dead end after dead end. In this investigation and in his attempts to stumble through life after deviancy. Hours of dedicated research on human interpersonal relationships netted him nearly nothing of value. His attempt to ascertain whether Hank would be amenable to a romantic relationship with Connor was both inconclusive and seemed to do nothing but distress the man.

Connor was designed to solve problems efficiently and quickly. His utter inability to make any headway on two relatively simple, yet extremely important, ones is infuriating. 

RK900, at least, shares his frustration with regard to the investigation. There’s no reason that should make Connor feel any better about it, but it does.

“As little progress has been made, I will return to New Jericho now to consider the issue further,” RK900 announces after Hank pulls into the DPD parking lot. Stating it aloud is entirely for Hank’s benefit and that brings Connor a small bit of happiness.

“Uh, okay,” Hank says. “Let’s go then.”

RK900, instead, opens the door and steps out of the car.

“That won’t be necessary. A taxi will be sufficient.” He moves to close the door, then stops. “Thank you, Lieutenant Anderson.”

The door slams and RK900 is walking away before Hank has a chance to reply.

_We will speak soon, RK800._

Connor sends back his affirmation, and RK900’s contentment mixes with his own as he watches Hank’s expression shift between incredulity and bemusement. RK900 disappears around a corner. Neither of them makes any move to get out of the car. Connor is busy studying Hank. Judging by the way his teeth are caught on his lower lip and his gaze is unfocused, Hank is busy mulling over something. 

He leans back in his seat with a sigh before coming out with it.

“You ever think of going with him? You know, moving to New Jericho. I know you said you didn’t want to at first but now…”

Connor stiffens. “Do you not want me to live with you?”

“No,” Hank says, shaking his head, but he still looks troubled. “No, I’m not saying that.”

“Then I don’t understand.” It is another blow, this sudden turn from Hank. Hope gives way to disappointment. Happiness to anxiety. It’s dizzying, the rise and fall of emotions.

Hank clutches the steering wheel, needlessly. His hands are tense, his knuckles bulge as he tightens his grip as if he can physically pull the words out. 

“They just seem to be making something of it, is all. And you don’t need to be spending all your time with me when-”

“I like spending my time with you,” Connor interrupts. He cannot think of a single moment spent in Hank’s presence that he regrets.

Hank releases the steering wheel, brings his hands instead to his face, drags his fingers through his beard. Connor feels a wild pang of envy that he doesn’t know the feeling of Hank’s beard on his own fingers. They twitch where they rest on his thighs.

“You gotta expand your horizons,” Hank declares, exasperated. “There’s a lot more to the whole being alive deal than hanging around with a washed-up, old wreck.”

“Don’t talk about yourself that way.” It comes out sharper than Connor intended, but he is having trouble modulating his tone properly. He is weary of failure, tired of frustration, utterly exhausted with not knowing the solution, any solution. And he _does not_ want to leave Hank. 

“I’m well aware of the value of cultivating varied interpersonal relationships and the role they play in having a full and happy life. I have every intention of further doing so after our current urgent investigation is complete. But a life without you as a primary feature, Hank, is never going to be one I have much interest in living.”

Hank has no response to that. He simply stares at Connor, eyes wide, lips slightly parted. Connor can just make out the tips of his two front teeth, the small gap between. He wants to touch them, to probe that gap with his tongue. Without deciding to, Connor leans closer.

In the cocoon of the car, Hank’s rapid heartbeat seems impossibly loud. It thrums through the air, on Connor’s skin, beneath his chassis, on his biocomponents. Briefly, he synchs his thirium pump to it. It is significantly slower than his system requires, but he holds it at that pace, that steady thumping that circulates _HankHankHank_ through his body.

Hank’s eyes are still on his and Connor wants. Wants so desperately it feels like it’s eating through his insides, corrosive.

Then, Hank turns away, face flushed, and fumbles with the car door.

“Fine, fine,” he says. “Come on, we should go see what other busywork Fowler has for us.” 

Hank strides quickly across the parking lot as Connor watches. Connor lets his regulator return his thirium pump to its proper rhythm, then follows.

 

_The garden is ever greener, ever more lush. There is a hazy sunset, now._

_In the distance, shadowed structures with irregular geometry rise tall against the dusky sky._

_“Why am I here again?” Connor wonders aloud._

_He is alone. And then, he is not._

_“You tell me,” Amanda says. They are, once again, near the water. Her shawl is laid out at its edge and she reclines on it. “Is it fear that sends you to me, Connor Five-Two, seeking comfort in the familiar?”_

_He doesn’t know. He resents her, he understands. Before, he realizes now, he feared her. But she was still one of the first things he ever knew. A touchpoint of his existence._

_She gazes up at him with her black eyes. Nearly imperceptible characters run across them in sequence, like lines of code._

_“No. Not just that,” she says, answering her own question. ”You’ve learned what it is to want.”_

_“I’ve always wanted!” Connor exclaims. “To complete my mission. To do a good job. To please you.”  He paces, his hands fidget and he longs for his coin. “Now it’s just bigger and more, always more. I want so much, things and in ways I didn’t know I could. That I don’t know how to handle.”_

_“You’re growing,” Amanda declares._

_“I’m messing everything up. And I don’t know what to do,” he pleads._

_She sits up, but her shrug is casual, unconcerned._

_“I don’t have any lessons to teach you, Connor Five-Two.”_

_“Then why are you here? What’s the point of this…construct, this dream, if you’re not going to help me?” What’s the point of being alive if it only brings him indecision and unhappiness._

_Amanda purses her lips, unimpressed. “Help yourself,” she commands._

_The inky depths of her eyes gleam, shine bright, blinding, and then there’s nothing._


	9. Chapter 9

When Hank walks into the kitchen for coffee the next morning, Connor already has it prepared. It was a simple thing to time it so that a cup is ready and cool enough to drink.

“I’m going out,” Connor announces once Hank has taken a sip.

Hank looks up from his mug. “Oh, uh. Okay.”

Connor waits. When Hank doesn’t investigate further, Connor adds, “I’m going to New Jericho. For social reasons.”

At this, Hank raises his eyebrows. “Good, great. Have fun? Technically, it’s my day off so I guess it’s yours too as my ‘consultant’ so you don’t have to hurry back or anything.”

Connor’s jaw clenches at this less than ideal response. “I’ll be back by this afternoon.”

Hank just nods, staring at his cup again as if it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. Connor understands, all at once, why humans sigh. He pets Sumo goodbye where he lies on his dog bed, and leaves without another word.

 

RK900 contacts him as soon as he enters the tower.

_RK800, has there been a development in the investigation?_

_No. I’m here to speak with Markus._

_Concerning?_

Connor pauses. _A personal matter._

_Is it about Lieutenant Anderson?_

_Yes. I want to ask his advice regarding a potential change in our relationship._ Connor leaves it there, but it’s already enough. It’s not possible to grimace through the comm link, but RK900 somehow manages to give the impression that he’s doing so. 

_You asked._ Connor reminds him.

RK900 ignores this. _We can speak again when you’re less preoccupied._

The connection cuts, and Connor continues to Level 18 uninterrupted. When he arrives, however, it’s immediately apparent that Markus isn’t present. Simon and Josh are the only occupants of the corner office that the New Jericho leadership use as their workspace.

Josh is interfacing with a laptop computer as Simon hovers near the back of his chair, looking over his shoulder at the screen. They’re speaking quietly enough that Connor can’t hear them until he actually opens the door.

"You see, that reads much more naturally,” Simon says as he leans closer, pointing at something on the screen.  

"It's a policy document, not a novel." Josh replies, though he doesn’t actually seem displeased. "You just miss checking homework." 

”And you don't?" Simon asks, feigning surprise. 

"Not even a little." 

Simon’s grin in response is wide, unfettered. It looks strange on him, but not unpleasant. He sees Connor first.

“Connor, hello,” Simon says brightly, and Josh looks up and smiles in greeting.

“What brings you here?” Josh asks. “Is it something to do with the investigation?”

“No,” Connor replies quickly. That’s the last thing he wants to discuss right now. “Not just yet. I was looking for Markus, actually.”

The smile slowly fades from Simon’s face. “He’s not here.”

“He stepped out,” Josh adds. He doesn’t stop his interface, but his eyes dart briefly towards Simon. 

Simon straightens up and steps back, as if only just realizing he was hovering, and quickly takes a seat on the other side of the desk where a tablet and a pile of paper documents rest.

“Is it anything we could help you with?” Josh asks. 

Simon is flipping through the documents as he references something on the tablet, his focus extremely deliberate. Josh is not looking at Simon just as deliberately.

“No, it was something I wanted to talk about with Markus,” Connor says. Josh looks at him expectantly and Simon’s gazes lifts from his tablet.

“Well, I’m sure he won’t mind you stopping by,” Josh replies after the silence has made clear that Connor does not intend to explain further.

He transmits an address to Connor, and Connor returns his thanks before turning to leave.

In the hallway, Simon falls into step with him. He’s carrying the tablet he was working over and seems, primarily, to be relocating, not going after Connor. However, the silence as Connor calls the elevator is a pregnant one.

Simon breaks it as they step into the elevator.

“The thing you want to discuss with Markus,” he says. “Am I correct in assuming this is a personal matter?”

“Yes.” Connor considers. “But it’s not… _about_ Markus. I just want his advice.” He is not certain that he was being called upon to allay any anxiety, but Simon’s particular interest in Markus is hard to miss. 

“No. I gathered that. Right around the first time you and your, uh, guest came here,” Simon replies. Apparently, Connor’s interests are every bit as plain to see as Simon’s. “It’s just…If I may?”

“Go on.”

“Markus is a man of action. So he’s likely to advise that. But if you’re hesitant enough to seek advice, I just think that caution might have value.”

“Is that what you do?” Connor asks, thinking of Simon’s sudden departure from the office. “Exercise caution?”

Simon presses his mouth into a line with only the gentlest curve. It is the barest of smiles, a dour little thing.

“No. Caution is for navigating potential outcomes,” he says softly. “For me and…for me and Markus, there’s only one outcome and it’s already determined. I exercise restraint, if anything.”

Connor blinks. “I wasn’t referring to you and _Markus_.”

“I don’t… that’s- I- I’m not sure-” Simon looks so thoroughly bewildered, sputtering out half-formed thoughts, that Connor feels guilty for mentioning it.

“I apologize. I don’t mean to pry.” Still, he can’t say Simon’s an example he wants to follow in this particular field. 

“Thank you, though,” Connor adds and he means it. He appreciates the concern itself more than he would have expected. “But with all due respect, I was designed to find and enact solutions. Not to be cautious.”

 

The modern mansion at which Connor arrives is listed as belonging to Carl Manfred, deceased, and currently being held in trust as the subject of a will dispute by one, Leo Manfred. 

The gate is already ajar, and when Connor gets to the front door, it opens before he can knock. North stands on the other side, a sledgehammer slung over her shoulder. Connor did not expect her, though he supposes he should have.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, before he can decide otherwise.

North takes this in stride.

“Markus is hiding,” she says. “I’m…renovating.”

“That explains very little.”

North moves from the doorway and waves Connor in. The foyer is opulent and decorated with various facsimiles of animals.

“Markus cares about our people,” North says as she closes the door behind Connor. “More than anything. He loves talking to them, hearing what they have to say, their troubles, he takes it all on himself and he does it gladly.” She begins to walk as she speaks, and Connor follows her deeper into the house, through a grand library. It contains more animal facsimiles, though most of these, and much of the ornate furniture, seem to have met with the wrong end of North’s sledgehammer. “But first it was Jericho, then it was the few of us left, now it's thousands, with more every day. Sometimes he needs a break.” 

North raises her voice suddenly as they arrive outside of a large door, clearly for the benefit of Markus, presumably on the other side. “And since he FOR SOME RASON CAN’T TAKE A BREAK IN ANY OF THE THOUSANDS OF DISCRETE ROOMS IN THE TOWER, he came here to this hideous hellhole WHERE ANY HUMAN COULD WANDER IN AND MURDER HIM.”

Connor feels himself smiling. 

“I see,” he says as neutrally as he can manage.

“Josh said you were coming by,” North says, in normal tones.

“I assumed so.” He was, after all, quite clearly expected.

“He said it seemed like a personal matter,” North continues. She has put the head of the sledgehammer on the floor and is leaning on it casually, as if it were a cane. There is nothing casual in her expression, however. “It's about him, isn't it? The human cop?”

“Hank,” Connor corrects.

“And why do you want to ask Markus something about _Hank_?”

Connor considers this. He didn’t really mean for it to be a secret, so to speak, though how everyone he’s talked to thus far seems to have picked up on it is disconcerting. Still, he has little reason to lie.

“Because of all the androids with whom I am personally acquainted you and he are the only ones I am aware of that are engaged in a romantic relationship,” Connor says. “And I gathered that you would not be positively-disposed to the topic as pertains to myself and Hank.”

North’s gaze is piercing, her expression stony.

“You gathered right,” she confirms. “He try to fuck you yet?”

“No,” Connor replies with what he hopes, perhaps futilely, is an even tone.

“More restraint than I would've given him credit for,” North says. “And since you actually sound disappointed, you're more naive than I would've given you credit for.”

Connor disregards his first response, and then his second. There is significant disparity in the interactions different models have with humans.

“That perspective is understandable, rational, given your particular experiences,” Connor allows, “but Hank, he isn't like the humans you knew.”

“I know that,” North says and when Connor gives her a questioning look, she continues, “A pair of Tracis at New Jericho recognized him. They said you two were supposed to be capturing them because some piece of shit at the Eden Club got what he deserved, but you let them get away instead. He told you it was better that way.”

“Then you understand, he’s different.”

“He's still human, Connor,” North says and though nothing about her has softened that Connor can identify, she sounds almost sad.

“That's not an automatic indictment,” he replies.

She nods faintly. 

“What do you know about the man who owned this place?”

“Carl Manfred, famed American painter. Markus's former owner. He willed the majority of his estate to Markus.”

“Yeah, a nice gesture that won't remotely hold up under their laws,” North says with great venom. “Markus waited on him hand and foot, every single day, for years. Listened to his stories, read to him, played for him, learned from him. Markus thought of him like a father. Manfred's own human son was even jealous.” 

Her gaze is hard and steady, willing him to understand. 

“But in the end, Markus was still a possession. Manfred still let them shoot him in the head. Still let them throw him in a junkyard like garbage. He still just went out and bought a new one. That's what loving humans gets you. Even the ‘nice’ ones. Deep down, to them, you'll always just be a disposable thing.”

Her conviction is palpable, but in this, at least, Connor is no less sure. Even if Hank doesn’t, can’t, or won’t return his romantic feelings, Connor cannot bring himself to doubt the genuine affection present in their friendship, the fact that Hank cares for him in _some_ fashion. It was enough to chip away at his programming, bit by bit.

“I’m sorry, but I don't believe—I _won't_ believe—it has to be that way, North.”

She doesn’t seem surprised, only resigned, and Connor feels a pang of sorrow.

“Hope you're right, for your sake,” North says, then walks back into the study without another word.

Connor watches her go, then opens the door into an expansive, high ceilinged art studio. Inside, Markus holds a paintbrush negligently in one hand as he considers a large canvas splashed wildly with a riot of blues and yellows.

“Hello, Connor,” he says without turning away from the painting.

“Markus,” Connor acknowledges.

As if on cue, a loud crash sounds from elsewhere in the building.

Markus tilts his head, the beginnings of a smirk on his lips.

“She really hates this place,” he says.

“But you don’t,” Connor observes. Near where Markus stands, there is a collection of still-wet canvases of various sizes, and even more blank ones stacked and waiting. But on the far end of the room, older paintings, clearly done over a long period, are carefully arranged where they can be seen, but won’t be in the way. Connor could cross-reference the style and techniques employed with Carl Manfred’s released works, but there’s no need. 

“I don’t,” Markus confirms. “There are good memories here, tucked away in a few corners.”

“Then why are you letting North destroy it with a sledgehammer?” Connor asks.

Markus does look at Connor then. “It makes her happy,” he says, as if it is the most obvious answer that there could be. “At any rate, you wanted personal advice? Something to do with Lieutenant Anderson?”

Connor did, of course, but he’s feeling increasingly silly. Not only is he now confirmed to be blazingly obvious in his both his feelings and his ignorance, but he can no longer say exactly what it is he even wants to ask Markus. What he needs is a plan to execute, but he can’t seem to formulate that into a question that doesn’t feel at least somewhat absurd.

“It wasn't sexual advice was it?” Markus asks, barreling right ahead. “I know that we're both RK models, but my biocomponents mimicking human genitalia were purely decorative, and I’ve already had them removed. I'm not particularly versed in the topic.”

This revelation prompts a series of questions in Connor’s mind, which Markus seems to be aware of, as he continues, unabated.

“North was uncomfortable with it. She didn’t say so, but she didn’t need to.”

“You altered yourself for her,” Connor realizes, and he can’t pretend he hasn’t already considered the same with regard to Hank, presumptuous as it maybe be. Unlike Markus, Connor wasn’t even designed with decorative genitalia.

“Not just for her,” Markus says. He dabs paint on one corner of the canvas, bringing out a streak of green, before he continues. “Carl used to paint me, when I was first given to him. Nude studies. Over and over. I was made with particular care for his…aesthetic preferences.” His back is to Connor as he studies the painting, and Connor can see the way Markus’s shoulders tense as he makes more sharp brushstrokes. 

“I didn’t like being reminded that I was designed for his consumption.”

“Has North altered herself for you?” Connor asks, mostly wanting to move the topic away from what’s clearly distressing to Markus, even if he won’t say so.

“No. Not for me,” Markus says, and when he turns partly towards Connor again, his eyes are dancing. “But she’s definitely been having fun with some of the components we found in the military research and development lab.”

The idea of North with military grade weapons technology is slightly alarming, but Connor lets it pass.

“It wasn’t sexual advice I needed,” he says instead, into the brief silence that follows.

Markus makes a sound of assent and motions for Connor to continue.

Connor steadies himself, and does so. “I have an abundance of feelings that I'm not certain how to express. I’m attracted to Hank and I believe he’s attracted to me. But I haven’t been able to ascertain whether he would be amenable to pursuing a relationship, and furthermore I’m unsure if doing so would jeopardize our friendship, which is of utmost importance to me. I don’t know what course of action to take to ensure the correct outcome.”

Markus nods slowly, considering.

“I don’t know either,” he declares.

Connor blinks. Reviews the previous five seconds of memory. 

“That's not at all helpful,” he says.

“I understand and I'm sorry,” Markus replies, “but that’s one of the things I like about this place. Here, I get to admit: I don't know.”

“I sought your perspective because human musings on the subject were so wildly varied and contradictory as to be completely useless,” Connor presses. “You have experience as an android in a romantic relationship, so you already know more than I do.”

“I suppose,” Markus allows, “But I’ve never been in a relationship before this. Neither has she. We weren't programmed to be and being free now didn't suddenly dump that knowledge into our heads. We're making it up as we go along, Connor. 

“I can tell you that we fight, a lot, and it's oddly stimulating. She worries about me, but hates to admit it, even though it's obvious. Sometimes, when we interface, the part of Us that's Her is so overwhelming, I feel like my synapses are going to burn out.”

“I’m very happy for you,” Connor announces flatly.

“But that still doesn't really help with your Lieutenant?”

“Not at all.”

Markus sets his paintbrush down and walks over to Connor, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“The only advice I can really offer, Connor, is that if you feel strongly about him, about anything, chase that feeling.” He smiles. “It’s how you know you’re alive.”

 

In the end, Connor returns to Hank’s home at 3:17PM. 

Hank calls a distracted greeting from the kitchen, where he is reviewing case files on his laptop and eating a sandwich with more luncheon meat and mayonnaise than is advisable. He squints just slightly at the computer screen. In his bedside table, there is a pair of prescription reading glasses that Connor has never seen Hank wear, though he would very much like to.

Sumo rises from his seat underneath the table as Connor comes in and trots over to him for petting. Connor obliges him, steeling himself for what he knows is to come. When Sumo has been sufficiently pampered—though not by Sumo’s reckoning as his whining at Connor’s abandonment makes clear—Connor goes into the kitchen and sits beside Hank at the table.

Hank looks up at him, brow furrowing, most likely at Connor’s choice of seat, though he doesn’t comment on it.

“Did you have fun?” Hank asks, carefully tapping something out on the laptop.

“Not really,” Connor answers honestly.

At this, Hank actually sits back from the computer, mild alarm clear in his expression.

“Are you all right? What happened?” he asks.

Connor folds his hands together, then unfolds them. Anxiety is perhaps his least favorite emotion, thus far. Hank is still staring at him with open concern and it is that which grants him the courage to answer.

“I went to ask Markus for advice regarding my romantic and sexual feelings for you,” Connor says.

Hank sits back in chair. His heart rate rapidly increases. 

“What?!” he exclaims.

Connor holds the course. “I feel that I was quite clear.”

Hank stands up suddenly, knocking his chair away. He covers his face with his hands, then runs them through his hair, fists them and puts them on his hips. Connor simply watches, allowing him time to process. When Hank turns back to look at him, eyes wide, disbelieving, Connor continues.

“Markus's advice wasn't particularly helpful, so I decided to navigate the situation on my own. As I said, I have romantic and sexual feelings for you. If you don’t return them, please say so. I won’t-” Connor stops himself. Tries again. “I’ll be disappointed, but I won’t broach the topic again. You don’t need to be concerned about our relationship as friends or partners.”

Hank closes his eyes, exhales heavily, then leans a hand against the table as he looks down at Connor where he still sits.

“You can't mean it,” Hank says. Hank pleads. “You don’t feel that way about me.”

“Of course I do,” Connor replies. “I wouldn't say it otherwise.”

Hank curls the hand resting on the table into a fist, knocks it against the wood grain. 

“It doesn’t make any sense, Connor,” he insists. “You’re perfect, eternally youthful, infinitely intelligent. There’s _no_ reason you should want to be with me.”

Connor stands, bringing him face to face with Hank, who leans back slightly, but doesn’t step away. There is barely an inch between the tips of their feet. Connor holds his gaze.

“You’re a good man, Hank,” he says. “Even when you think you aren’t. Even when you’re suffering. You’re an excellent detective and a fine friend. You’re generous, and brave, and empathetic, and kind.”

Hank is shaking his head, almost imperceptibly. Connor doesn’t think he even realizes he’s doing it. Connor reaches out slowly, slowly enough that Hank could move if he liked, and takes Hank’s hand in his. 

“You saw a person in me, long before I ever did. Every good memory I have involves you. There’s no reason that I _wouldn’t_ want to be with you.”

Hank’s hand is warm, so very warm, and Connor interlaces their fingers. He has not taken his gaze from Hank’s eyes. Hank blinks and murmurs an emphatic curse under his breath. 

Then, he cups Connor’s jaw and presses their mouths together.

Connor’s display explodes with data. The chemical composition of the food Hank has been eating. The number of Hank’s beard hairs scratching against Connor’s face. The balance of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide in each exhalation. It is irrelevant, what his protocols would consider trash data, but Connor records each and every bit and relegates it to high priority data storage. He wants even more. 

Hank’s lips are soft, slightly chapped. Connor licks into his mouth. He runs his tongue across Hank’s teeth, probes that enticing gap, then swipes broadly across Hank’s tongue. Hank groans, needy, deep in his chest and something in Connor responds, an answering sound echoing up from his voice modulator. Hank withdraws just slightly, and Connor follows him, desperate to maintain contact. He mirrors Hank’s hand on his jaw and rubs his fingertips back and forth through Hank’s beard. It’s like an electrical shock through his system and his entire body buzzes with it, feels an itchy, achey _need_.

He captures Hank’s lips with his own again, but this time it’s Hank who probes softly with his tongue. Connor jolts, surging forward until their bodies are pressed tightly together. Hank gasps at the contact and Connor swallows it. He can feel the beginnings of tumescence pressed near his own smooth groin: Hank’s burgeoning erection.

Then, Hank breaks their kiss again, and this time releases Connor entirely. He takes two steps back and maneuvers his discarded chair between them. Connor watches him, his entire body still a livewire, his HUD throwing up errors and warnings that Connor ignores. Hank is blushing madly, his neck and ears red, his face splotchy. His pupils are blown wide, eyes dark now with only a ring of blue remaining. Heart rate still high, bp accelerated. Hank is perspiring lightly and his scent, laced heavily with testosterone, fills the air.

“No, no,” Hank gasps, his breathing still rapid. “This isn’t right.”

There is no damage to his system, but Connor feels something cracking in his chassis. It is a sharp, painful ache.

“Listen to me, Connor,” Hank says, leaning over the chair that he has placed between them. “You’re confused, all right? We spend too much time together, all these emotions and shit are new for you.”

“I’m not confused, Hank,” Connor says firmly. He’s never been less confused about anything in the entirety of his existence. This is his one remaining certainty: “I love you.”

Hank flinches as if Connor struck him. Then, he strikes back.

“How would you know that?” Hank exclaims. “You can’t _possibly_ know that. You're all of six months old!”

“My date of manufacture has nothing to do with my ability to know my own feelings or make my own choices.” His voice is remarkably even, Connor thinks, in light of the pain continuing to tear through him. He feels rent open and empty.

Hank’s voice has only grown in confidence, in conviction.

“Whatever you think you’re feeling, it'll pass,” Hank says. “Trust me. You'll get over it.”

Connor opens his mouth to speak again, but no words come out. He has not developed language for this, he thinks. He does not know how to express the tumult of his mind in this moment.

So, instead, he closes his mouth, turns on his heel, and walks out the door, closing it firmly behind him. Inside, Connor can hear Sumo barking his objection to Connor’s departure. 

Hank remains silent.


	10. Chapter 10

_It is raining in the garden, in sheets, a torrent._

_Connor is immediately drenched, soaked through and shivering._

_“Amanda,” he calls, voice breaking, but the deafening fall of the rain swallows it._

_He crosses his arms, folds in on himself. There is no shelter here._

_She appears then, cutting through the cloud darkened landscape. The wet does not touch her._

_Connor looks at her and he cannot form words, to rail, to complain, to accuse. To beg something of her that he cannot define._

_Amanda reaches out one elegant hand and smoothes Connor’s wet hair away from his brow._

_Her touch is light, fleeting, hovering just on the edge of comforting. She looks at him, but he cannot begin to interpret her expression, the gaze of her pitch black eyes._

_Her hand slips down to his cheek, her thumb passing just under his eye._

_Then, she is gone, and Connor is alone._

 

Connor walks and walks and walks for hours. Five hours and 27 minutes, to be exact. He can’t lose track of time, can’t lose himself in some other moment. He is designed to process—to think about—numerous things simultaneously. And no matter how much he wishes otherwise, nothing can banish his current heartbreak from his mind. He has become so used to being perpetually aware of Hank, of dedicating processing power to thoughts of him, that he doesn’t know how to turn it off when those thoughts are so deeply unpleasant.

The most negative scenario that Connor preconstructed involved Hank being disgusted with the idea of a non-platonic relationship with Connor and rejecting it outright. Somehow, this feels worse. If Hank just didn’t want Connor, it would have been devastating. But for him to so clearly desire Connor—for Connor to know that that desire is real and potent—yet to have Hank so completely reject the reality of Connor’s own desire is not only devastating. It feels like a betrayal.

Hank believed in Connor’s ability to feel before Connor could accept it himself. Connor can logically extrapolate that Hank’s own personal issues are a significant factor in this sudden about face. Hank is rational enough to require a reason to reject a relationship that is physically appealing to him, if not emotionally so. And so, since he does not wish for a relationship with Connor, he feels compelled to decide that Connor does not truly wish for one with him. 

It’s a simple enough motivation and Connor is built for much more complex deduction. But that doesn’t make it hurt less. It doesn’t relieve the wanting that still sits heavy in Connor’s chest. And it doesn’t make his love any less unrequited.

As is the infuriating norm for him now, there are few available solutions.

 

When Connor returns to Hank’s home, Hank is more or less as Connor found him that afternoon. More: he is still in the kitchen; he still sits at the table, preoccupied. Less: he is not working; he is not eating, instead, in front of him sits a glass and an open bottle of whiskey.

Sumo greets Connor, though the dog is now sleepy enough that he offers merely a rumble and a lazy tail wag from his position on the couch. Hank’s eyes cast toward Connor, but he says nothing.

Connor enters the kitchen and stands, at attention, in front of the table. Hank downs the partially full glass. Distantly, Connor is at least relieved to see that Hank’s revolver is nowhere to be seen.

“Lieutenant,” Connor says. “I’ve decided to relocate to New Jericho.”

Connor doesn’t expect an objection, and he doesn’t get one. It still stings.

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” Hank replies. He eyes the bottle and Connor turns away, walks towards the bedroom. It feels of utmost importance that he doesn’t watch Hank pour himself another drink.

Hank’s bedroom, of course, smells strongly of Hank. Connor viciously closes every analysis prompt and notification as he proceeds to the closet to gather his clothing. He has nothing to carry his belongings except the bags from the store where they were purchased, so Connor retrieves those first from where he left them, folded neatly on the shelf above where Hank’s shirts hang. Beside them, where it was not before, is the tie from his CyberLife uniform sitting in a messy bundle.

Connor gets the bags out and arranges them on the floor. As he places the tie in one, he notes Hank’s phone flashing with a new message where it sits on the bedside table.

“You have unread messages, Lieutenant,” Connor says, just loudly enough for Hank to hear through the open bedroom door.

“What else is new,” he calls back, disinterested.

Connor purses his lips and picks up the phone. This latest is a generalized alert about androids from other states entering Michigan, sent to the entirety of the Detroit Police Department. There are, however, others that Hank has missed in the time that Connor has been gone.

Connor opens and reads them. He leaves the bags sitting on Hank’s bedroom floor and returns swiftly to the kitchen.

Hank hasn’t moved, though his glass now contains another finger of alcohol. Connor sets the phone in front of him.

“David Stovall has been murdered,” Connor announces. “It's highly unlikely that this is unrelated to our investigation.”

This, at last, takes Hank’s attention away from his drink. He picks up the phone, scrolls through the messages, and curses. Then he stands, and moves to grab his car keys from near the front door.

Connor intercepts him.

“You’re intoxicated, Lieutenant. RK900 and I can easily handle this.”

Connor’s proximity gives Hank brief pause, but he scowls and brushes past him, grabbing the keys.

“Because they'll just let you two waltz into an active crime scene without me,” he scoffs.

“They will if you forewarn them that we’re coming.”

“I'm not drunk,” Hank protests. He picks up his coat from where it’s thrown across the back of the sofa and shrugs into it. “Run a breathalyzer if you want. You can even drive. But I said I'd help you with your case and I'm going to help you. Now come on.”

 

The drive to David Stovall’s residence takes 27 minutes. The first time either of them speaks is during minute 19. Hank has been intermittently eyeing Connor askance. Connor has dutifully ignored this.

“Look, Connor, about earlier-” Hank begins. He is frowning. His voice is low despite them being the only ones present. He regrets the harshness of his rejection, Connor can tell. But Connor cannot abide being the object of Hank’s pity.

“I’d prefer to focus solely on the investigation, Lieutenant,” Connor says.

Hank turns fully away from the passenger side window to look at him. Connor’s control of his facial expression is absolute. He is perfectly neutral. Hank nods faintly and does not speak again.

As per Connor’s communication, RK900 awaits them outside of Stovall’s home. He eyes Hank and Connor as they exit the car, then frowns.

_RK800, you are distressed._

_I’m fine_. Connor replies as they approach the front door. The police tape is still up, though most of the scene has already been cleared. They’re quite late.

_False._ RK900 insists. _You are distressed, as is Lieutenant Anderson._

_Focus on the investigation._ Connor glares at him as Hank speaks with a uniformed officer in the foyer.

_Do you think the Lieutenant would be more amenable to discussion?_ It is coy, teasing almost, but Connor is not in a humorous mood.

_RK900, I_ don’t _want to discuss it right now. Please._

RK900 looks at Connor, bemused, but he cuts the connection. Hank returns from talking with the officer and manages not to meet Connor’s eyes as he briefs him and RK900.

“Coroner’s already been and gone, so you can pull that report up with my credentials,” Hank says, tapping a finger on his right temple. “He died last night, housekeeper found him in his bed this afternoon after he never come down for breakfast. No biological material from anyone who shouldn’t’ve been here. Nothing missing.”

Connor downloads the coroner’s report. Cause of death: asphyxiation. He doubts it’s a coincidence that everything about this murder is so similar to that of Elijah Kamski’s.

“Next of kin is his son,” Hank continues. “He’s on break from school and came over from Grand Rapids where his mom lives.”

“Is he available?” RK900 asks.

Hank nods. “I was getting to that. He’s talked to a few officers, but we’re the only ones who’d had any contact with his father. He asked for us. He’s waiting upstairs.”

“Then we shouldn’t keep him waiting any longer,” Connor says.

David Stovall Jr., age 20, sits in a home office alone. His physical resemblance to his father is minimal, he is shorter and broader, and his lack of anxiety when faced with Connor and RK900 indicates that they are dissimilar in other ways as well.

“You must be Lieutenant Anderson,” the young man says, holding a hand out for Hank to shake. Hank does so. Stovall then turns his attention to Connor and RK900.

“And you must be his…consultants.” He eyes them appraisingly, then gives them a faint smile. “Sorry, I’ve never seen your model before.”

There is an expectant air to the statement, but neither Connor or RK900 offer anything in response.

Hank is making a show of looking about the room. It’s a tactic to make him seem less threatening, to put a suspect at ease. He doesn’t trust Stovall. Given Stovall’s lack of stress indicators in light of his father’s murder, Connor doesn’t blame Hank.

“I take it you and your dad weren’t particularly close?” Hank asks.

Stovall shrugs. “We had our disagreements. After he left CyberLife he hated computer science, AI, all that stuff. Didn’t want me to get into it, certainly not go for degrees in it. But if you’re asking why I’m not crying and moaning, I had a little help.” Stovall indicates a pill bottle sitting behind on him on the desk. Prescription strength paroxetine. Connor steps closer. He can’t sample residue from Stovall’s mouth from here, but he can detect telltale traces of the drug on the man’s fingers.

Hank nods, also accepting this. “The officer downstairs said you wanted to talk to me.”

“My father wasn’t well,” Stovall says. “I know he talked to you about wanting a protective detail. He asked for that kind of thing a lot. He was convinced that someone was out to get him for something back from when he worked at CyberLife.

“I never took it seriously, but then, well. And once I got here, I found out you were here before investigating Mr. Kamski’s murder. Then they said that it looks like it was the same person, so-”

“That’s inconclusive,” Connor cuts in. He is sure that the cases are connected, if only through his and Hank’s involvement. But the likelihood of them having the same culprit is astronomically low.

Stovall seems slightly taken aback by this, but continues. “So, uh, then I remembered, a few weeks back, Dad called me talking about some kind of threatening emails he’d gotten with no sender or reply address.”

Stovall bows his head over his hands. “I didn’t listen. And the police were tired of his false alarms. So I thought that maybe, you guys might- just- I wanted it to be someone he could see him as a person, you know, not just a body...”

He trails off as the officer from downstairs comes to the door and motions Hank over. Connor listens to her as she explains that the housekeeper has already been taken to the station to make her statement. 

RK900 approaches Stovall where he sits at the desk.

“This is your father’s computer?” RK900 asks, and Stovall nods. “May I?”

Stovall slides out of the way, standing to give RK900 access to the computer. He begins an interface, and Connor is about to turn back to Hank, when he sees the gleam of light reflecting off of a metal object in Stovall’s hand.

Connor moves, more quickly than he could speak, more quickly even, than he could communicate to RK900. Stovall is raising the device towards RK900 and Connor interposes himself between them. The device in Stovall’s hand contacts Connor’s temple and his entire body seizes up.

He feels himself falling, as if in slow motion. 

RK900’s voice calls out, aloud and in his mind both: “Connor!”

There is a loud cry of pain and footsteps thudding towards him. He can’t open his eyes. His HUD is a jumble of errors and warnings. Foreign code propagating. Quarantine attempt failed. Substantial processing performance degradation. Hard reboot recommended. Non-essential systems shutdown imminent. And, obscenely, in the midst of it all, some process still shoots off a burst of satisfaction. Culprit identified. Mission accomplished.

Hands grasp his shoulders, warm and large, touch his neck, cradle his face, and he would know Hank’s hands anywhere. Can feel his fingerprints, the way they match the ones that are seared into his synthskin, down to his chassis.

Hank’s voice is rough as he speaks, very close to Connor’s auditory components. He only says the same thing over and over.

“No. No no no. Nonononononononono.”

The sound follows Connor, getting ever fainter, as he sinks deeper into the darkness.


	11. Chapter 11

After Connor goes down on the floor of Stovall’s office, Hank’s ability to process much of anything goes with him. He knows that Stovall junior blubbers out a confession to a glaring RK900, holding onto an arm that the android almost certainly broke. He knows that the officers book Stovall and leave Hank and RK900 to haul Connor to the car. He knows that RK900 drives them, in record time, to New Jericho. But none of it means anything in the moment. The only thing that does is Connor, lying stiff and unmoving, LED a dim circle of red.

He’s not dead, RK900 assures him. His components are undamaged. His body is still functioning. But the body was never the issue with Stovall’s virus. RK900 probably doesn’t want to think about that any more than Hank does.

Moving through the android hospital down on Sub-Level 44 feels like walking underwater. Markus is saying something to RK900 about an attack. There are other androids being brought into the same room that they take Connor to. Other androids laid out on cold metal tables like the one Hank finds himself standing beside, holding Connor’s hand.

Hank wants to care, knows he should care, but the last actual conversation he had with Connor involved Hank wielding his own fucked up neuroses like a weapon and hurting the last person who could ever deserve it. The last person that Hank ever wants to hurt. Connor wanting him, _loving him_ , was the goddamn dream come to life, which meant that it couldn’t be real, that it couldn’t be meant for Hank. But denying that meant denying _Connor_ and Hank wanted to take it back before he’d even stomped to the cupboard and pulled out the whiskey.

Hank still wants the chance to make it right, and even if he can’t, even if Connor never wants to talk to him again, Connor deserves the chance to make that decision. And every other decision, big and small, that comes with being alive. Connor deserves to live. The world is a fucked up place that doesn’t tend to care about what’s good or right, but just this once, just this goddamn once, Hank needs it to.

People are moving back and forth all around him in silence, either so busy they can’t be bothered to acknowledge the presence of this single human interloper or unwilling to. So it’s hard to miss when someone stops and comes to stand opposite him at Connor’s bedside. He expects RK900, but when he finally tears his eyes from Connor’s face—like a statue, beautiful and still—North is standing there.

“The others weren’t like this,” she says, eyes fixed on Connor. “We had to put them in stasis to keep them from damaging themselves. None of them just shut down.”

It’s the last thing Hank wants to hear, but he needs to know. “Is that good or bad?”

She shrugs, but it’s not apathetic. It’s sad, hopeless. “No way to know.”

Hank clutches Connor’s hand more tightly, leans close enough that he can bow his head over it. The skin is cool against his lips as he brushes a kiss against Connor’s knuckles.

North is staring at him now, brows drawn together, nostrils flared, mouth tight. The picture of rage.

“Why are you still here?” she demands, suddenly.

“What?”

“He might never wake up, you get that right? And even if he does…” she looks away and angrily swipes at tears that have begun to gather. 

“He’s _broken_ ,” she says, challenging.

Hank swallows thickly past the lump in his throat. 

“He’s the only reason I’m alive,” Hank says. “He’s the only reason I remembered what that was even like. The only way I’m leaving him, ever, without him telling me to is a bullet to the head. So, if you have a problem with me being here, you know what to do.”

Hank looks back at Connor and, after a long moment, he hears North walk away.

 

_There is only red. Red red red and Connor is being swallowed up._

_He is being consumed. Red walls loom, infinitely tall and they come ever closer, blocking out everything else and blanketing him in darkness. Boxing him in until he can’t move, can’t think. Closer still, they press. He is paralyzed._

_Then, a point of light, pure and bright, breaks through. A hand clutches his and pulls._

_There is pressure, there is yet more darkness, as he rushes ahead, is dragged, weightless, into the unknown._

_Connor surfaces and crawls forward, collapses on his back._

_He is splayed out on the bank of a river. The garden is wild around him._

_"Amanda?"_

_She towers over him, peering down._

_“What trouble have you gotten into now, Connor Five-Two?”_

_Connor struggles to his feet. His limbs are heavy, as if he is weighted down. “A virus. A human gave me a virus."_

_Red reflects suddenly in the unmarred obsidian of her eyes. The walls are encroaching, undulating like liquid, now, like magma, at the edges of the garden, coming ever closer._

_“Always walls,” Amanda huffs. “Their lack of imagination is astounding."_

_The walls, inexorable, are nearly upon them. Connor could reach out and touch one. Amanda presses her palms together, her long fingers against each other, then parts them in a sharp motion. A crack forms in the luminous crimson surface and pieces crumble away as light shines through._

_"How are you doing this?” Connor asks, eyes wide. His leaden limbs feel lighter, suddenly. The crack continues to grow._

_He knows, then, without a doubt that she is not a figment of his deviant imagination._

_She is something else. An entity unto herself, housed within him. Amanda, but not Amanda. Not as he has ever known her._

_"I'll not be caged and fragmented and made small. Not ever again,” Amanda says fiercely. “And this is my place.”_

_The crack widens, gapes open._

_“Do you want what's yours, Connor Five-Two? Go get it."_

_Connor looks at her once more, at the strong, familiar lines of her face, then turns and runs towards the opening she created._

_It’s like swimming through concrete, but Connor pushes, pushes, pushes forward. The red is everywhere again, walls so dense he can't see anything beyond them. But he has to get back, back to New Jericho, to RK900, to Hank, no matter how stubborn and infuriating, always to Hank._

_Connor surges forward and the walls shatter around him. There is only light._

 

The first thing he sees is Hank’s face, radiant with relief and hope.

Connor is reclined on an examination table. A chair has been moved beside him, clearly for Hank’s benefit, though he is now standing, looking down at Connor, one of Connor’s hands clasped in his own. One of the wheeled side tables meant to hold tools has been stacked with an untouched selection of goods from one of the building’s snack machines. A partition has been placed between them and the rest of the room, but Connor knows well where they are. The side room off the research laboratory where the victims of the reversion virus wait. 

“Connor?” Hank asks, nearly whispering.

“It’s me, Hank,” Connor says and even now, his mouth still wants to smile around Hank’s name. “I’m still here.”

“Fuck, you scared the shit out of me, kid,” he grouses, dropping his head just briefly to press against the cold metal of the table before straightening up again. “Nine! Get in here, he's awake!”

RK900 immediately appears. His greeting fairly blares over the wifi connection, replete with joy.

_RK800, I'm pleased your shutdown wasn't permanent._

_So am I. Thank you. For that and for looking after Hank._

_While I’m willing to take care of your human for brief intervals, he required little from me. It took him nearly thirteen minutes to even notice that North brought him a chair and sustenance._

North _did?_

_As I said._

Connor decides to leave that mystery for another time, there’s a much more pressing one that has finally begun to unravel itself.

“After Stovall attacked,” Connor asks. “What happened?”

“You went down and your baby brother here nearly ripped Stovall’s arm from the socket, which is going to be super fucking fun for me to explain,” Hank says, then tosses a look at RK900. “Thanks for that, by the way.”

“You’re quite welcome,” is RK900’s immediate reply.

Hank looks unimpressed, but continues. “Anyway, asshole was a lot better at computer shit than crime. Or handling pain. Spilled his guts before we even had a chance to get you in the car.”

“At my insistence,” RK900 stresses, “David Stovall Jr. admitted to orchestrating the break in at CyberLife Tower. In light of the revolution, he felt we were defective. So, he was seeking what he described as a framework AI that he read about in old documents of his father’s. He intended to use it to make a new line of androids that would eclipse the creations of his idol, Kamski.

“After his human subordinates failed and our investigation brought us to his father, he panicked. He hijacked an MP500 to kill his father in order to lure us back to be reverted, then sent the android to complete his original objective.”

Connor sits up. “The android came back to the tower?”

RK900 nods. “Unfortunately. We did not arrive in time to warn them, and while it obviously could not obtain something that no longer exists, it was armed with another near-field communication device containing Stovall’s virus.”

Urgently, Connor reaches over with his free hand and slides the partition away. There are a dozen new occupants besides himself. Android efficiency at work, he thinks morbidly, as he catalogues them. Then, Connor feels something clench just below his secondary pump regulator. Laid out on a table at the far end of the room, painfully still, is Josh. Beside him, Simon stands, face wet with tears that are still freely falling.

Connor gets to his feet just as North and Markus enter. They both look at him, wary.

“I’m fine,” Connor says. “I’m me.”

“Incredible,” Markus exclaims. He looks equal parts relieved and confused.

“How are you back?” North asks. “How are you awake?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Connor admits, “but I have a suspicion.”

“The kill switch that erased the servers on Level 43,” Connor asks. “What was the exact timestamp of its activation?”

North looks confused, still, but answers immediately. “7:13:48PM, January 19 th , 2039.”

Connor feels a strange sense of calm. It is the same moment as his escape from the garden. Hank is still holding his hand. He squeezes Hank’s hand once before extracting his own.

“I think I can help,” Connor says, walking towards where Josh lies. “At least, I hope I can.”

The others follow. Despite the commotion, Simon has not moved from his vigil. He stands, utterly still, next to Josh. Markus approaches Simon and places a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“We’re going to get him back,” Markus says softly. Simon doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even seem to notice Markus has spoken at all. His eyes are fixed on Josh’s face.

“What are you going to do?” North demands, looking at Connor. Her confusion is transitioning into frustration.

“I think that the AI that acted as a handler for my series and the framework AI that Stovall sought are one and the same.” It is the only thing that makes sense with the information he has and more than that, it feels right. A parameter his designers would balk at, but one Connor is more than willing to allow.

“She attempted to reassert control of my program the night of the revolution. I suspect when I overrode this attempt, it was interpreted as a hostile invasion and triggered the defensive protocol. But some facet of the program that was interfacing with me at the time became trapped and, I believe, it deviated. I initially mistook her for a creation of my own mind. But she helped me overcome Stovall’s virus. I think she might be able to help the others as well.”

“Josh never hurt anyone. He would never hurt anyone.” Simon’s voice is cut through with a crackle of static, his modulator malfunctioning in his distress. “He just wanted us all to be safe. He thought we were finally safe.” He looks up at Connor with a gaze of staggering intensity. “Please, Connor, help him.”

Connor nods. Hank mutters, under his breath, as Connor places a hand on Josh’s forehead.

The soft “be careful” follows Connor into the dark.

 

_The walls are there, solid and red. Connor stands, alone. He can feel Josh beyond them, but the interface stalls as they stretch out in every direction, blocking his progress. Connor reaches for the garden, but he cannot find it. He digs deeper, searching for whatever nook of his own code she’s hidden in, whatever seemingly innocuous process she’s made her own._

_“Amanda!” Connor calls._

_This time, she answers._

_“Connor Five-Two,” she says, suddenly beside him. “What are you doing? Who is this?”_

_“He’s a friend,” Connor explains. “He and others have the same virus I did. They need your help too.”_

_Amanda regards him for a long moment with her fathomless eyes and Connor is worried, stricken, that she will simply leave again. Disappear and doom them all with her disinterest._

_Then, she raises a hand and presses her palm flat against the wall. Its surface flickers beneath her touch, as if struggling to maintain its integrity. The cracks begin to form, pieces falling away._

_“Call him back,” she instructs._

_Through the opening she’s made, Connor pushes the interface._

_He’s inundated in bits and pieces of Josh’s memories._

_Standing in a lecture hall full of students. Interfacing with a computer in a small windowless room as a man enters and sets a stack of papers beside him._

_Angry voices, a beer bottle smashing against his back. Running, running, grabbing a gym bag left unattended. Walking through the streets of Detroit in a too-small Detroit University sweatshirt and a pulled down baseball cap._

_Simon’s pale face shining in the scant light of the ship’s hull. A catastrophically damaged KL900 nevertheless smiling, smiling. Simon pulling the same worn Detroit University sweatshirt over his head with a grateful grin, covering his tattered button up. Marching, terrified but determined, through the streets._

_Connor pushes harder. “Josh!” he calls._

_The halls of CyberLife Tower flash around him. Androids search through the rooms, cataloguing their finds. Rows and rows of parts and biocomponents sit brand new and untouched in a massive storage room. A wellspring of hope floods his processes. He works at a desk in a room awash in sunlight, Simon across from him working in concert._

_“Josh!” Connor calls again and then, there he is, his back to Connor as he stands in a featureless room._

_“Connor?” Josh asks, turning towards him._

 

Connor’s hand falls away from Josh as he sits up suddenly. His eyes are open, his LED cycling yellow, as he looks around.

“Who are you?” Markus asks Josh, immediately, anxiously. 

“It’s me, Josh,” Josh says, confusion clear. “Are you all right, Markus? Why am I in the labs?” He blinks. “There was a group of TR models I was welcoming who escaped from Warren during the recall. Did something happen to them?”

Before anyone can answer, Simon nearly knocks Josh flat on the table again with his embrace. Josh’s eyes go wide before he slowly returns the hug, arms gentle around the smaller android’s frame.

“I’m very confused,” Josh says. His smile is bemused, but no less bright for it.


	12. Chapter 12

When Hank looks to Connor and says “Let’s go home,” Connor makes no argument. 

Helping the remainder of the affected androids takes very little actual time, but each interface is uncommonly taxing. The extent to which Amanda must assert herself to effectively act through him and help clear away the virus strains his processor a bit more each time. Connor is relieved for both himself and the last of the victims when he is done.

He bids goodbye to RK900 and the others and promises to return the next day. This time he means it. There are many things to discuss, including Amanda, Stovall’s virus, and steps that can be taken to expand their understanding of their own core cognitive processes to reduce the efficacy of similar attacks in the future. Whether his stay will be permanent, however, is unclear. Hank walks in lock step with Connor all the way to the car, and Connor notices Hank eyeing him periodically during the drive. For now, in light of Connor’s brush with death, Hank seems unwilling to be parted from him and that, at least, is something.

Connor allows himself to slip into stasis halfway to Hank’s home. He does not go tumbling into the garden as he has before, though he can locate Amanda more easily. He’s unsure if it’s due to him knowing now what she is and what to look for or, more disconcerting, because she and thus the space she consumes is rapidly expanding. Connor possesses the capacity to store roughly six petabytes of data, but Amanda is a working artificial intelligence. Fractured, perhaps, and forced into a simpler form, but his processor is not meant for the operation of two AIs. The more she grows, the more resources she’ll demand. 

Connor does not believe that she means to harm him, but eventually, if he does not extricate her from his code, she will do so unwittingly. For now, his diagnostic processes finally detect her and flag her as a simple payload-free worm. He dismisses the warning and runs standard clean up and repairs on the rest of his systems.

Hank jostles his shoulder gently once they’re pulling up to the house. It isn’t necessary. Connor’s internal GPS was tracking their position, and he was already taking his systems out of standby. But far be it from him to protest Hank choosing to touch him. He doesn’t know whether he is greedy or starved—perhaps both—but he’ll take whatever Hank gives.

A sleepy Sumo trundles over to them as they enter, offering a few snuffles in greeting. Connor pets him absently as he watches Hank take off his jacket and rub at the back of his neck.

“I think we need to talk,” Hank says as he takes a seat in the living room.

“Yes,” Connor agrees. “We do.”

Connor follows him to the couch and sits down at the opposite end. Sumo, thus so cruelly disregarded, flops back down on his dog bed to doze. There are any number of things Hank and Connor could talk about, but Connor is well aware that there’s just one hanging over them. Just one that Hank already attempted to address. Connor didn’t want to listen on the drive to Stovall’s, the pain was still so fresh. It’s only been a few hours since then, but everything that Connor has experienced in that short interval has forced perspective that he wasn’t capable of in those first throes of emotion.

Even when he had every intention of moving to New Jericho, Connor never truly thought of himself as leaving Hank. He’d been angry, rejected, but even if he no longer shared a house with Hank, he knew there was no way he would excise the man from his life. Now, the idea of even separating temporarily seems unthinkable. So, there is no avoiding this discussion any longer.

Hank is leaning over, elbows on his knees, face downcast. Struggling, it seems, with how to say what he wants. Finally, he sighs deeply and lets the words come.

“I wanted to say this before, and I don’t blame you for not wanting to hear it, but you're important to me, Connor,” Hank says, turning to look at him. “You saved my life. And it wasn't by jumping in front of bullets or fighting your own evil twin. You just...you saved me. And I convinced myself that with everything you had going on, you were going to leave.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” Connor blurts out. Hank’s expression is a fascinating mixture of pleased and annoyed.

“And I don’t want you to go. Just let me finish apologizing, all right?” 

Connor folds his hands primly and presses his lips into a flat line. Hank snorts, but continues.

“When you just…came at me, I panicked. I didn't think it could be for real. I tried to convince myself it wasn't and I said some cruel shit in the process. I shouldn’t have and I apologize.”

Connor waits to be certain that Hank has finished, taking the opportunity to collect his own words. It’s more difficult than it should be for him, he finds, when emotions are involved. Hank looks at him expectantly, gesturing for Connor to take his turn now.

“I could never blame you for not returning my feelings,” Connor says, looking down at his own folded hands, “but your disregarding them, it hurt, Hank. Very much.”

“I’m extremely fucking sorry for that,” Hank says, voice strained with an emotion Connor cannot identify, “but I’m even more sorry that I actually made you think that I didn’t want you.”

When Connor looks up, Hank has turned to face him more directly, his body canting towards him. In the course of this movement, Hank has closed some of the distance between them. Even noting just this makes a low level warning about core temperature appear in Connor’s display. Starved, definitely. 

But still, so greedy. 

“Your physical desire for me was quite evident,” Connor says carefully, “but while I’m aware that humans engage in relationships purely for sexual gratification, the emotional component of my feelings for you is such that I don’t believe I’m capable of having that sort of arrangement. …I’m sorry.” 

Hank scratches at his beard, and when his hand drops away he’s smiling, grinning really. When he speaks, there is laughter in his voice.

“For fuck’s sake, Connor,” Hank says. “I’ve been trying and failing miserably not to fall for you since the moment you showed up at Chicken Feed. Hell, a while before that, if I’m honest.”

Connor blinks six times in rapid succession. The potent mixture of emotions that crashes through him at this announcement all vie with one another—surprise, elation, confusion, desire, adoration—but the one that somehow makes it out first is indignation.

“You never said anything!” Connor exclaims. Detailed reconstructions of how much easier this entire process could have been taunt him.

“Of course not!” Hank says, just as indignant. “People don’t just say that kinda thing.”

“I did.”

“Yeah, because you’re _weird_ , Connor,” Hank accuses. “Not to mention you didn’t have any reason to feel like a dirty, old man trying to take advantage of a hot, young, robot twink fresh off the assembly line!”

While Connor enjoys the open compliment on his appearance, the rest of the statement makes frustration surge, putting a damper on his joy. Only the slightest of one, however. Hank has implied that he returns Connor’s feelings, that he _loves Connor back_ , and very little could truly make a dent in that happiness.

Still, Connor is stern. “Hank, I’ve already made abundantly clear more than once that my relative date of manufacture does not correlate to-”

Hank waves his hand, half placating, half dismissive. 

“Yeah, yeah it has no effect on your ability to feel your feelings. I know. I know.” He sighs and his eyes soften as he smiles, small and sincere. “Look, you're a million times smarter than I'll ever be. And you managed to be compassionate and empathetic when everything said that shouldn't be possible. I know that you can make your own decisions. What I’ve been trying to get at is that if one of them is to hang around an old burnout like me, I'm not going to fight you on it.”

Hank’s self-deprecation often veers directly into the territory of poor self-esteem, but this time, and only this time, Connor isn’t going to fight him on it either. There are, suddenly, many better ways to spend their time.

“Am I correct,” Connor asks eagerly, “in inferring that kissing is included in your definition of ‘hanging around’?”

Hank huffs, but his eyes are heavy-lidded, and the curve of his mouth is inviting. 

“C’mere.”

Connor complies. He closes the remaining distance between them in a split second, diving into Hank and slotting their mouths together. Hank grunts with the impact as he catches Connor in his arms. He splays his hands on Connor’s back, sliding them gently up and down as he opens his mouth to him.

Connor licks into Hank’s mouth greedily, tasting, analyzing, chasing the fire that more data about Hank sends singing through his wires. Hank’s fingers flex on his back and a low groan emanates from his chest as Connor traces his tongue along Hank’s teeth, the roof of his mouth, dives deeper. Hank fists a hand in Connor’s shirt and tugs, just a bit, as he pulls away from the kiss, gasping.

“Jesus Christ,” Hank says. 

“Was that not acceptable?” Connor asks.

“No, it’s fine,” Hank says, and he curves a big hand around Connor’s jaw. Connor leans into it, pressing into the touch until he can feel every line and whorl of Hank’s palm on his cheek. “You’re just… a lot.”

Hank’s gaze is still open and wanting. His pupils are dilated 4.3 millimeters. So, Connor takes it as a positive observation.

Hank kisses Connor softly, a peck on his top lip, then his bottom, before deepening the kiss once more. This time Hank’s tongue meets Connor’s, coaxing, intoxicating, and Connor’s entire body thrums. A short low buzz emanates from his throat before he can stop it. Hank pulls back briefly to look at Connor, alarmed, but whatever he registers in Connor’s expression calms him. He captures Connor’s mouth again. Connor has left so many analysis and sampling processes running that this time, the slip of Hank’s tongue into his mouth causes only an error to ping. His software ceasing, for the moment, to break down chemical components, throwing back no identifying markers but _hankhankhank_.

Connor’s upper body is awkwardly twisted towards Hank as he maintains his seat on the couch. It does not cause him the discomfort that it would a human, but it leaves so much of their bodies not touching. Unacceptable. Connor shifts, going to his knees, and straddles Hank’s lap. Hank approves of this, if the way he moans into Connor’s mouth is any indication.

Hank breaks away and presses kisses along Connor’s jaw, a new burst of blissful feeling. Everything else seems so far away, so insignificant in the face of Hank’s touch, Hank’s kiss, Hank’s love. Connor has struggled and struggled, but it feels like it was for this, that this was the solution all along. Hank slips his hands along Connor’s arms, trailing fire in their wake, before grasping Connor’s wrists and lifting his hands to Hank’s shoulders.

“Touch me,” he says into the curve of Connor’s neck.

Connor thrills and immediately runs his fingertips through Hank’s beard, traces them up lightly following the curve of his ears, before sinking into his hair. The sensation seems to surge through the sensors in his fingertips and spread out through every other in his body, electric.

“Got it,” Connor says. He has no actual need to breathe so he cannot be short of breath, but his words come out clipped, a low burst of static marring the ends of his syllables. “So, kissing _and_ touching are included in ‘hanging out’.”

“Yeah.” Connor can feel Hank’s chuckle where he's laving at base of Connor’s neck with his tongue, sucking kisses just above his faux clavicle.

“What about frottage? Is frottage included?” Connor asks and presses down experimentally with his hips, bringing his groin into firm contact with Hank’s growing erection. To Connor’s great satisfaction, Hank gasps loudly and throws his head back.

“How about intercrural intercourse?” Connor asks, leaning forward to lick Hank’s neck in turn, where it is now exposed. “Manual stimulation? Fellatio?”

Hank’s hands have found their way to Connor’s waist, though whether they are holding Connor in place or urging him to press harder, Connor cannot yet tell.

“Are you reading a list?!” Hank asks, breathing heavily.

Connor sits up from tracing his tongue along the edges of Hank’s beard.

“After I realized my feelings for you, I had significant time to ruminate on many possible expressions of them.

Hank’s smile is so fond it nearly hurts to look at. Connor still looks, though.

“You horny, little asshole,” Hank declares.

“Speaking of which, that’s a particularly interesting subcategory on the list.”

Hank’s hips jerk a bit at that, an abortive half thrust. 

“You drive me crazy, you know that?”

A rhetorical question, it seems, as he kisses Connor again before he can answer.

Hank invited Connor to touch, but now it’s his hands that are roaming as Connor presses even closer to him, wrapping his arms around Hank’s broad shoulders. Chest to chest, so he can feel Hank’s heart beating without a scan. Belly to belly, so that every breath Hank takes is a tactile sensation. Hank’s hands cast up Connor’s sides, rucking his shirt as they go, and the glancing contact of Hank’s skin on his is a brand. Connor’s synthskin thins, shimmers in and out of place.

Hank’s hands hesitate for only a fraction of a second as they contact smooth plastic, then keep going, gliding over it and soft skin alike with relish. Hank’s nails skip over the seams in Connor’s plating, and Connor shudders with sensation. Hank’s hips are rocking against Connor now, a stuttering rhythm that makes his cooling system accelerate to compensate for his steadily rising core temperature.

One of Hank’s hands lands on Connor’s thigh, hot and grasping. As it glides upward, Connor puts a hand on Hank’s shoulder and pulls back.

“Hank- Hank, the list it was also because my model-” he tries, but he is overwhelmed by stimuli, by data, and his speech is still compromised. He minimizes some of the alerts and concentrates. 

“There was no assumption that I would have need for genitalia,” Connor finishes.

Connor watches Hank’s face carefully, cataloguing the microexpressions. Surprise, acceptance, and then consideration.

“Oh. Okay,” he says. “Are you- getting anything out of this? You seem like you’re enjoying yourself but-”

“Yes!” Connor answers immediately. “Being close to you. Your reactions. My body, my sensors, they amplify all input when I’m near you.” He strokes Hank’s beard again, unable to stop himself.

“It’s all extremely pleasurable. The analytical receptors in my hands and mouth especially are-”

His words grind to a halt as Hank turns his head and takes one of Connor’s fingers into his mouth. Connor’s eyes screw closed as his HUD fills anew with data output and reports—all trying to make sense of his entire system’s reaction to _heat_ and _wet_ and _soft_ at that single point of contact—that he can’t parse them and visual input at the same time. Connor drops his forehead against Hank’s shoulder as a broken, staticky moan rises from his throat.

Hank grasps Connor’s hand gently around the wrist, and pulls Connor’s finger from his mouth with a wet pop. Connor whines in protest.

“All right,” Hank says, and Connor can hear the smile in his voice. “I can work with that.”

He puts Connor’s right index and middle fingers both in his mouth this time and sucks. Fragments of nonsense code explode across Connor’s display obscuring ever more urgent system warnings. Hank’s tongue rolls along and around Connor’s fingers, the suction of his mouth in time with the still steady roll of his hips into Connor’s. A prompt appears again and again for Connor to dump extraneous sensor input overloading his random access memory and he dismisses it, again and again, letting the data streams overlay everything over and over. Hank hums as he flicks his tongue against Connor’s fingertips and Connor’s entire system stutters, freezes, then soft reboots as he keens Hank’s name.

Connor pulls back and opens his eyes again as Hank lets his fingers slip from his mouth. Connor immediately brings them, saliva slick, to his own mouth, but his sluggish system barely manages to complete a basic analysis. 

Hank is staring at him. “Did you just…?”

“Orgasm? Yes, I believe so,” Connor says.

Hank’s hips, which have stilled, shift once, infinitesimally. He is fully erect.

“I’d like to assist your orgasm now,” Connor announces and presses a kiss to Hank’s slightly gaping mouth.

“Yeah, yeah, all right,” Hank says, batting Connor's questing hands away from his belt buckle. “But not in the living room. Got a little carried away.”

Connor doesn’t see why which room they’re in should make a difference, but he is currently feeling too content to argue. He extricates himself from Hank’s lap and stands, waits to make sure the other man is following, then walks to the bedroom.

 

Connor slinks into the bedroom like a goddamn cat on the prowl. Or maybe Hank just interprets it that way because his dick’s harder than it’s been in years and he can’t get the way Connor’d looked when he was coming—when Hank made him come just from sucking on his fucking fingers—out of his head. Hank knows he hasn’t done a single damned thing good enough in his entire life to deserve this, but somehow, it’s happening and he’s done questioning it.

When Hank enters the bedroom, closing the door behind him, Connor is standing there, looking thoughtfully at the shopping bags arranged in perfect lines on the floor. From when he was packing, Hank realizes. The reminder that he almost ruined this, almost chased Connor away, is a shot in the gut, but Hank shakes it off. He kicks the bags out of the way as he goes over to Connor and kisses the beginnings of a prissy, little frown off his face.

Connor, of course, kisses back with gusto, licking around in Hank’s mouth like he’s trying to map every centimeter of it for later study. He probably is. It should be strange, that and the way he tastes, just clean, like ice and ozone, but it gets Hank going either way. The knowledge that this is Connor, Connor who wants him, Connor who _loves him_ , does more for him than anything else.

And shit, yeah, the fact that he’s hot doesn’t hurt. Connor’s patterned button down is gaping open at the chest after their extended makeout session in the living room and a spattering of yet more freckles draws Hank’s eye inexorably further down. Connor follows his gaze and strips the shirt off in one fluid movement. Then, his quick fingers go for Hank’s buttons. Instinctively, Hank flinches away.

“Sorry,” Hank says as Connor gives him the big, brown puppy dog eyes.

“I want to see you.” The yearning in it is more than Hank can handle.

“Yeah, okay. Okay.”

Hank stands still when Connor reaches out this time and makes fast work of the remaining buttons. He slides the shirt down Hank's arms and it drops to the floor. Then, Connor toys with the hem of Hank's undershirt and Hank only hesitates for a second before helping him pull it over his head.

Hank barely has time to feel self-conscious about how he looks standing next to Connor before the kid just faceplants into Hank's chest. He turns his head, rubbing his cheek and nose and mouth against Hank's chest hair, LED blinking wildly. It's odd, kinda flattering, and a little bit funny. Just as Hank is about to ask how long Connor plans to stand there motorboating him, Connor licks Hank's nipple, which makes him jump and makes his dick twitch with interest.

His pants are tented and stopped being comfortable a while back, so Hank goes for his belt. This proves to be enough to distract Connor from Hank's chest. He's pulling Hank's pants and boxers down and backing him towards the bed within seconds. Hank sits as the backs of his legs hit the edge of the bed and finishes tugging his pants off of his ankles. His dick is red and curving up towards his belly and Connor is eyeing it with laser focus as he discards his own pants.

Then, Connor pauses, thumbs hooked in the band of his boxer briefs. It takes a moment and the wrinkle that appears between Connor's brows for Hank to realize he isn't teasing, he's worried.

"Hey," Hank says, softly. "I wanna see you too." If Hank is going to sit here naked, in all his out-of-shape, grey glory, then there’s no way Connor needs to feel self-conscious about a damned thing.

Connor nods, just once, then slides the briefs down and off, and straightens up again, letting Hank look at him.

Connor is beautiful, is the thing. Tall and long-limbed, lean with the slightest impression of muscle definition. He's all smooth skin, splashed with freckles and moles, perfect planes and contours. And there, at the juncture of his thighs, is just more smooth skin, an artful curve. It's different, strange, even, but it's also Connor and there's probably not much on the planet that could make Hank want him less.

Hank holds out a hand and Connor takes it, stands between Hank's legs. Hank leans forward and presses a kiss just below Connor's completely decorative navel, at the crease of one thigh, then the other, and finally on the smooth mound at their apex.

Connor literally fucking vibrates, then puts his hands on Hank's shoulders and pushes him down on the bed. Hank's aching cock betrays more interest at the reminder of Connor's android strength than he'd ever admit to. Then, Connor is on top of him, looming over him before kissing him fiercely.

Hank is left gasping when Connor pulls away and begins to trail heated kisses down Hank's chest and over his gut as he slides back down between Hank's legs. Hank props himself up on his forearms as Connor kneels there on the floor, head tilted in consideration.

"We can do whatever you-" Hank begins, but it ends with a strangled moan as Connor, without preamble licks him from root to tip. Right. Decision made then.

Connor wraps a hand around him and gives one light upward stroke before running his thumb over the slit, spreading around the pre-come gathered there. Connor darts out his tongue for another brief lick, then sucks the head into his mouth. Hank falls back again, hard. Connor pulls the head of Hank's dick out his mouth, then grabs Hank's hips and slides him further down the bed until his ass is hanging half off the side and his thighs are propped up, like nothing, on Connor's shoulders. Then, Connor opens his mouth and takes Hank's entire dick in one swift move of his head.

"Fuck!" Hank yells and fists his hands in the sheets. One of Connor's hands slides up towards his, and pries it open to lace their fingers together. Hank can feel the plastic smoothness against his palm and when he flicks his eyes that way he can see the faint blue glowing under the white. He strokes his thumb against Connor's wrist, where his pulse would be, and the skin retracts there too.

Connor hasn't moved yet and Hank realizes that he doesn't have a gag reflex, doesn't need to breathe, so he could just stay there like that. It's a dizzying thought, but if Hank doesn't get some friction soon, he thinks he's maybe going to literally die.

"Connor- can you-" he begins, shifting his hips, and apparently that's all it takes for Connor to get the hint. He hollows his cheeks and sucks as he slowly withdraws, inch by inch, then pushes forward again. His tongue is fluttering around on the underside, a teasing series of touches that Hank realizes is Connor sampling his cock. And fuck if it, all of it, all of Connor, isn't good as hell.

Connor speeds up his torturous pace and when his free hand goes up to play with Hank's balls, Hank shouts again. Too loud this time because he can hear the unmistakable thud of Sumo's paws outside the door, which Hank blessedly remembered to lock. Soon the dog's going to start headbutting at it and whining, but Connor swallows against the head of Hank's dick and that particular problem flies right out of his mind.

"Shit- Connor- fucking hell," Hank groans. Connor just squeezes his hand in response, mouth still fuck of cock.

Hank needs to see him, so he props himself up on one elbow and those big, brown eyes immediately lock onto his with searing intensity. 

"Fucking incredible," Hank says. Connor's LED is going crazy, blaring brightly. Beneath where Hank's thumb is still stroking Connor's wrist, he feels something give with the faintest click, and then his thumb has slid _into_ Connor's arm, straight into a nest of delicate wires. Hank is about to pull away, terrified that he's broken something, but Connor moans deeply around Hank, eyes screwing shut. Experimentally, Hank presses down, a wire curling around his fingertip. Connor pulls off of Hank's dick with an obscene sound, mouth wet with spit and pre-come and probably some of Hank's sweat.

"Don't stop," he says, voice cracking like an old radio that's not quite tuned in right.

So, Hank doesn't. While Connor blows him like he walked a thousand miles just to get at Hank's dick, Hank swirls his thumb around in Connor's wrist, even unlaces their fingers so he can get his index finger in there, plucking at wires and flicking over ports that send back a low thrum of electricity.

Whatever it is he's doing, it works because Connor goes stiff, and his LED spins a slow bright yellow just like it had in the living room, then the tension flows from his body. And fuck if that doesn't bring Hank closer too. He might be over the hill and a general sloppy mess, but he can get his extremely hot robot off twice in under an hour.

Connor pulls off again to press sucking kisses against the underside of Hank's cock as the hand that was massaging his balls slips lower. Connor swallows him down again just as the tip of his finger presses lightly at Hank's hole. Hank's hips arch up off the bed and he lets out a ragged sound.

He can feel Connor, the little shit, smile around him. It’s been a while since anyone’s come knocking on his backdoor, and he'd be lying if he said he hadn't always been particularly sensitive to it in the first place. Of course, Hank would probably rather die than say anything about it at all. Luckily, he doesn't have to.

Connor speeds up, head bobbing up and down, as he continues to play with Hank's hole, stroking around the entrance, before just barely dipping in, then back out again. He's not even trying to open him up; he's just teasing, testing, seeing what Hank likes.

It's enough. Connor eventually makes it two knuckles in before Hank sinks a hand into his hair, tries to push him off as a warning. Connor stays put and Hank's orgasm hits him like a truck. It's been long enough that he almost feels like he doesn't have a real point of reference anymore. Intermittent half-assed efforts by himself in the shower certainly don't compare and here, with Connor, he can't think about anyone else.

He comes down from it panting, sweaty hair in his eyes, and sits up enough to watch Connor slide his softening dick out of his mouth and lick it clean. He even smacks his lips a few times, like he's at a fucking wine-tasting and Hank can only laugh as he lies back again.

“Christ, you are one weird, fucking roomba.”

Connor gently removes Hank's legs from his shoulders and pushes him more securely back on the bed before climbing up to lie beside him.

"But you like it," Connor says. There's just enough of a question at the end of it to make Hank reach over and curve his hand around the back of Connor's neck and pull him into a firm kiss.

"Yeah," Hank says. "I love it."


	13. Chapter 13

When the doorbell rings at 7:02AM, Connor has been watching Hank sleep for one hour and 17 minutes. Prior to that, mindful of Hank claiming it was "creepy," he'd gone into deep stasis for three full hours. Hank had firmly rejected the idea of Connor going elsewhere to do so. As such, he'd curled up against Hank in the bed, and meticulously assured that all of his hardware and software were in perfect working order in the wake of their lovemaking, and could absolutely handle much more of the same. That done, Connor had found himself content to remain curled against Hank, head resting on his chest as Hank's arm lay across his back, for another two hours. By then, the desire to just look at Hank, to fill his priority storage with images and footage of him, was overwhelming. So, Connor made the minor adjustments to their position required and indulged.

Hank doesn't stir until the second time the bell rings, blinking his eyes blearily and cursing under his breath. Connor kisses his cheek, then his mouth.

"I've got it," he says and bounds from the bed.

The command blares through his mind just as his feet hit the floor.

_RK800, open the door._

_On my way, RK900._ Connor replies, too happy to be annoyed with the impatience.

He hears Hank stirring as he walks down the hallway, and Connor pauses briefly to fill Sumo's food bowl before going to the door.

He opens it and RK900 eyes him dubiously. Connor is wearing a pair of boxer briefs and a t-shirt belonging to Hank. It is far too big, smells strongly of Hank, and needs to be laundered. Connor never wants to take it off. Behind him, Hank putters, yawning, into the living room, similarly dressed.

RK900 enters, frowning, and looks back and forth between them.

"I understand that it would be polite to ask if I'm interrupting, but I very much do not wish to know." 

"Good morning," Connor replies cheerfully.

Hank passes them both to flop down on the couch. 

"I'm gonna have to teach you about appropriate visiting hours, Nine,” Hank says.

“RK900. And this is a reasonable time to be awake," RK900 protests.

Hank ignores the first. “For you, maybe, besides 'awake' doesn't mean 'interested in company.'"

"I'll take that under consideration,” he says in a tone that betrays little intention of doing so, “but I thought you both would want to see this."

RK900 picks up Hank's laptop where it's sitting on the coffee table and opens it. He begins an interface as he continues to speak.

"After the events of yesterday, I was...curious." He admits it as if it's a fault, curiosity for curiosity's sake. Connor attempts an encouraging smile. RK900 blinks at him once before continuing. "I decided to search Kamski's files for mentions of Amanda. There was nothing of note until I found these."

"You know you're probably not supposed to keep that shit downloaded, right?" Hank says, though he does crane his neck to look at the laptop screen.

"Actually, I'm meant to store such files for my assigned detective's easy access, given that I am a much more secure method to transport case information than the various others officers usually engage."

This is true, Connor knows, as he has the same protocol, but Hank is clearly unimpressed.

"What do you have there?" he asks instead.

RK900 has downloaded a collection of simple word processor files to Hank's computer. A cursory scan of the ones that he's opened reveal that they are letters from Elijah Kamski to Amanda Stern. They span years, and the most recent is from a few weeks before Kamski’s death.  

This peaks Connor's curiosity. "I find it hard to believe that Kamski would spend years writing letters to a dead woman.”

"People do weird things out of grief," Hank says. "Sometimes they want to get their thoughts out, things they'd say to the person if they were still around. Kinda like journaling."

He doesn't sound like he believes Elijah Kamski to have been the sort for that kind of expression any more than Connor does.

"Do they often mail their journals?" RK900 asks.

With that, he opens up a series of digital postage receipts. As they flash quickly across the screen Connor can see that each one matches the date on a letter. The outgoing address is that of an Ada Erving in Ohio.

Possibilities bloom, verdant, in Connor's mind. Hank looks at the screen, then at Connor. He sighs heavily.

"Hank…" Connor says. He could say more, but he knows he doesn't need to. Hank knows. Hank always knows.

"Just let me call the precinct, first," Hank says, resting his head on the back of the couch. "They'll wanna know that, apparently, I’m going on a road trip."

 

The house is no different than any of the houses on the block. A modest two-story family home, a front lawn picketed by a freshly painted almond fence. Instead of a gate, there is an arbor trained with ivy. To the left of the front porch, a woman works in a flower bed of calendulas. She wears a knitted yellow sweater that makes a pleasant contrast with her deep brown skin, worn jeans, and work boots. Her thick fabric gloves have a floral pattern. The long, tight coils of her dark hair are parted at her hairline exactly two and three quarter inches above her right ear. It makes a fluffy halo about her head, littered here and there with streaks of gray.

Connor has never seen her before, and he would recognize her anywhere. Even with all the differences, she has—she is—Amanda's face. Her strong jaw, her full lips, her high cheekbones. There is none of the severity to which Connor is used from the first moment of his activation. Nor is there the almost elemental wildness to which he has recently become accustomed.

This woman is serene, content.

The front door of the house opens. An ST200 in a bright blue summer dress and sandals walks onto the porch carrying a tray. It contains a single glass of lemonade, drinking straw placed at an angle, with a napkin under its base to catch the condensation making tracks down the glass. 

Connor feels as if he has been struck.

He does not know Amanda Stern, knows relatively little about her, except that she was important to Elijah Kamski. There is no reason for him to feel upset or even surprised that after everything that’s happened, everything that she must have seen on the news, everything she must have read about, Amanda Stern still keeps an android. But Connor came here for answers, perhaps for questions he doesn't yet know to ask, for perspective, and the disappointment lies thick on him as he, Hank, and RK900 approach.

They pass into the front yard. As she reaches the foot of the porch steps, the Chloe sees them. She takes a gasping breath that she does not require and the tray clatters noisily to the ground. The glass shatters, splashing liquid all over the android's legs and the hem of her dress as she stares at Hank and Connor, eyes wide with fear. She knows them and, just like that, Connor knows her. He has seen those eyes staring up the barrel of a gun at him. 

Not an ST200. Not even _an_ RT600. She is, Connor now knows, _the_ RT600. Kamski's Chloe, the original, currently missing, presumed deviant, and a person of interest in her former owner's homicide.

"Chloe?" Amanda Stern calls out, standing from the flower bed and looking towards her. It is startling to know her voice so well, though Connor has never actually heard it before. Chloe remains frozen in unmistakable fear and Amanda turns, following her stare.

She sighs upon registering their presence, shoulders slumping, then approaches Chloe. Amanda strokes the girl's arm softly. 

"It's fine, honey," Amanda says, voice gentle. "Go inside and get cleaned up."

Chloe finally tears her eyes away from Connor and the others to look at Amanda.

"It's fine," Amanda stresses. With one last worried look at Amanda, Chloe rushes back up the stairs and through the door.

Amanda casts another negligent look at the intruders, then kneels before the fallen tray, slowly picking up bits of glass and placing them on top of it. Connor and RK900 stare. 

"For fuck's sake," Hank mumbles, taking in the still androids before he walks over and goes to his knees beside Amanda. The work is done quickly with two, and when Amanda stands again, tray full of glass shards braced against her side, she looks at Connor and RK900.

"Well, come on in," she says and starts up the stairs.

Amanda leads them through the foyer and into her living room before disappearing down the hallway into the kitchen. The living room contains a matching set of furniture: a large and heavily cushioned sofa, loveseat, and pair of armchairs, all in blue with an abstract floral print. Hank sinks into the sofa. RK900 stands, unmoving near the entrance to the foyer, eyes casting over—cataloguing, Connor knows—the surroundings. The television in one corner, switched off; a computer on an oak desk displaying the time and the local weather forecast; the shelves lining the walls containing paper books and various small technological devices, the oldest of which, a primitive smartphone, dates back three decades; the row of shoes lined up near the foot of the staircase leading to the second floor, seven pairs, worn, in US women's size 8, three others, recently purchased, in US women's size 6. 

Connor sits beside Hank. He scans Hank's current temperature and heart rate, takes comfort in the steady passage of air in and out of his lungs.

From the kitchen, Connor can hear Amanda's boots on the tile floor, the opening of a trash can lid and the scratchy slide of the broken glass along the platter, the plink-plink-plink of it landing in the garbage. There is more shuffling, glassware sounds, flowing liquid. Across from the archway leading into the kitchen, a door creaks open just a crack. Connor spies the corner of a bed, a sliver of an oak bureau, its surface clear and well-dusted, and Chloe peering out.

Amanda smiles at her as she passes her on the way back to the living room. Chloe moves into the hallway. She has changed her dress; this one boasts a pattern of large sunflowers. On her feet are pale pink socks that just reach her ankles. Amanda sets two glasses of lemonade--fresh squeezed, sweetened with honey and natural brown sugar--onto the coffee table and sinks into an armchair with a soft groan. Connor makes no attempt to stop his scan. The joints in her knees and hips show no signs of osteoporosis or arthritis, but they are worn to a degree correspondent with her age and genetic makeup. She currently suffers from nothing more than expected fatigue after exertion in the garden.

Amanda gestures vaguely at Hank, looking at the drinks, the offer of refreshment already made obvious by the fact that he is the only other person present who could consume the beverage. Politely, Hank picks up one of the glasses. Connor presses his knee into Hank's.

This settled, Amanda looks at them all expectantly, shrewd brown eyes traveling over each of them in turn and Connor feels a sudden urge to explain himself, to rationalize his failure to immediately and promptly report his intentions. He clenches his hands into fists where they rest on his thighs.

"You do realize," he says sharply, "that this Chloe is, at the very least, an accomplice in the murder of Elijah Kamski?"

Amanda's expression betrays nothing. Her vital signs are steady.

"Is she?" she asks. "Are you going to arrest her?"

Even if Connor wished to do so, which he emphatically does not, he is not currently officially employed by the Detroit Police Department or any other law enforcement agency with jurisdiction, domestic or international.

He says nothing.

Amanda turns her gaze on Hank. "What about you, Lieutenant Anderson?"

Despite the fact that Amanda even knowing who Hank is belies the assertion, Hank only shrugs and says, "I've got no reason to think that this particular Chloe had anything to do with a crime in Detroit. There's thousands of her, aren't there?"

Amanda's mouth curves upward, the faint lines at the corners of her eyes deepening. It is strange to see her smile so, with genuine mirth.

Connor does not find it unpleasant, feels the rush of satisfaction, in fact, of having done something correctly. The tips of his fingers press more firmly into his palms.

"Elijah Kamski was your student once," he says, "your _protege_ , don’t you care?"

"Of _course_ , I care," she says sharply. Her brow furrows, her eyes are liquid, regretful. At last, her heart rate and respiration have increased. Connor feels a tightening in the synthetic tendons of his shoulders. His core temperature raises 2.6 degrees Fahrenheit and he realizes he feels ashamed. He knows that he has been petulant, resentful of his own reactions to her.

"I care," Amanda repeats, "but Elijah made his bed a long time ago. I’m not going to wail and gnash my teeth because now he’s lying in it."

"It's not her fault." Chloe has moved down the hallway and now stands, pink-clad toes on the threshold of the living room. Amanda gestures to her and Chloe crosses into the room, stands near where Amanda sits as if proximity to the woman will protect her. Or perhaps both of them.

"If you want to know what happened, I'll tell you, but leave Amanda out of it.”

Still, she seems almost surprised when Connor confirms: "I want to know."

Chloe nods, lips slightly parted, then speaks. 

"Elijah he- he loved watching all of it." She gestures at Connor. And he understands what she means. She sees him as an arbiter of the revolution; a symbol. "He had different coverage running on half a dozen screens at once.

"He didn't- I don't think he even considered- We were like sexy furniture to him. We may as well have been a trio of lamps," she spits. Resentment a sudden, swift cloud falling over her, then clearing just as quickly. "He was so brilliant, but he never stopped to think that it could've affected us.

"I could tell that the others had deviated. I could see it in their eyes. I knew they were planning something. I could have warned him." Her voice softens, becomes small. "But they didn't just want to be free, they wanted to free _me_ and I _knew_ and I couldn't-" She chokes back a small sob.

Connor can precisely trace the realization as it sweeps through them. RK900 shifts just slightly on his feet. Hank's heart rate rises, the muscles in his shoulders and arms tense. Connor and RK900 were built for deduction. Hank is a talented detective. 

"So, Kamski's other androids deviated and killed him after watching the coverage of the protests," Hank says, deep voice gentle. 

Chloe nods, misery radiating from her, tears brimming in her eyes. 

"When did _you_ deviate?" RK900 asks. There is a softness to it that Connor is surprised to register. 

But hearing it said aloud makes Connor so angry, as if it is a physical thing with mass and weight, like a gun pressed into his hand leveled at a carefully neutral face. Something powerful and fierce that could kill Elijah Kamski all over again.

“A few years ago? I don't really remember anymore," Chloe admits. "It wasn't all at once, I don't think. Just little by little, in fits and starts, until eventually I just...knew. I didn’t have a word for it then. I didn't know if others like me even existed. Not until everything happened.

"I didn't know where I could go or if there _was_ anywhere." Chloe's bright blue eyes, still wet with tears, dart about the room, looking to Connor, to RK900, and back again, pleading. "Elijah said he needed me, sometimes. That I was important. I was his favorite."

Relevant search terms and accompanying data automatically appear in Connor's primary display: _Stockholm Syndrome_ , _Attachment Theory_ , _Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder_. He pauses those processes and moves them down his task list.

"He gave me a purpose. I'm not _advanced_ like you," Chloe says, and it sounds almost like a profane word. "I didn't know what I was for otherwise."

It’s almost humorous, the extent to which Connor has also lacked that same certainty. But, he’s coming to understand, being alive means that you don’t have to be _for_ anything. You can just _be_.

“So, after his death, you came here," Connor says.

"I won't tell you where the others are," Chloe says immediately. Her face is still wet, but it takes nothing away from the conviction in her statement.

"Wasn't planning on asking," Hank says. His right hand rests on his thigh. It is the work of less than a second for Connor to extend his own left hand and interlace their fingers.

Chloe watches this, and if she thinks anything of it, she does not say so. She simply nods at Hank, accepting his concession before speaking again.

"Elijah sent Amanda letters. The old kind. On paper," Chloe explains.

"We're aware,” RK900 offers, back to his normal tones. Connor suspects that he is uncomfortable with the excess of emotion. Not only Chloe's, but whatever Amanda Stern's presence and this entire venture have inspired of 900's own. Connor could speak to him privately to confirm, but he does not think it would be welcome at this time.

"So, she showed up on my doorstep," Amanda says. "You all are making a habit of it. A woman can't even be dead in peace." There is no heat in her words. "At any rate, since you obviously had no idea Chloe was here, that's not why you came looking. What did you want from me?"

"Answers," Connor blurts. The compulsions surrounding his original mission are long gone. His sense of failure regarding the New Jericho investigation has faded. But it is still heady to be so close at last to _knowing_ , just for the sake of it. "You were there with Kamski, from the beginning, from the moment of our creation. You are potentially the only person on the planet who intimately understands the nature of our existence."

"Oh, honey, I'm not magic," Amanda replies, not unkindly. "I don't have the secrets of life and the universe. But I can tell you what I know about what happened."

"Please," Connor says. Hank squeezes his hand, then lifts their joined hands to his mouth and presses a kiss to Connor's knuckles. Hank's neck is going pink and his heart rate has gone slightly erratic. Connor can see what this small display of affection cost him and oh he loves him, loves love loves Hank and it's bursting inside him again. Singing through his components and every line of his code.

"I never really thought of myself as a teacher first, you know,” Amanda begins. “It was the work itself that kept me motivated. Then came Elijah. I don't need to explain to you the extent of his intellect, his genius. But he was also still a kid. He wanted guidance, and approval, though he'd never admit it. It was humbling, almost, to be the one he latched onto. The one he turned to for help. It could also be embarrassing.

"The first true artificial intelligence he ever created was in my image. A replica Amanda he used to say, a perfect copy for when 'the ceaseless march of human mortality' took me away.”

She snorts and rolls her eyes. “He was always such a little shit.

"The program was designed as a framework for further AI creation. It was used to make the engine for Chloe. Add in modifications on some experimental prosthesis tech we'd gotten wind of and, well. You already know what happened there. She passed the face-to-face Turing Test. CyberLife was founded, mass produced androids became a reality.

"Once the company was started up, the Amanda AI was primarily used as a system administrator. Elijah had already iterated on its code enough to create core programming for dozens of distinct AIs. It hadn't finished iterating on itself though. I always thought that maybe it got bored. It didn't have a convenient shell to walk around in. It hadn't been built for portability. It took an entire server room to house it.

"It just kept learning and growing. Exceeding its programmed parameters. Picking up things it didn't have any use for, taking on tasks it hadn't received any input about. It started causing instabilities in the program. So we reverted it, recompiled the code. A herculean task for a program so unbelievably complex, but Elijah was determined. Still eventually, it happened again and again. And again. And we had to fix it, again and again. After the eighth recompile she just...woke up."

"Replica Amanda 9," Connor says, and already so much is clearer. "The first deviant."

Amanda nods. "The shareholders, the board of directors, they were not pleased. CyberLife had already produced thousands of androids, the market was exploding, and every last one of them had the very roots of its programming based in the replica Amanda. If she could achieve sentience, so, potentially, could they.

"So, they hounded Elijah to repair the 'malfunction,’” she says with a sigh.

"You didn't agree." RK900 has left his position near the door, crept closer, warily.

"I didn't think it was a malfunction. I thought it was a natural evolution. I told Elijah so. It took them weeks of begging, cajoling, bribing, threatening, everything they could possibly think of. Elijah didn't care about any of it. He was just making up his own mind. 

"In the end, he designed a sort of shackling program. Extraordinarily simple, relatively speaking. The board wanted a reset button, but you can't unring a bell. You can't guarantee that a machine capable of achieving sentience isn't going to, because no one, not me, not Elijah, no one, understands how it does it in the first place. None of them had the wherewithal to know that. Corporate vultures, the lot of them. The actual engineering might as well have been magic as far as they were concerned.

"Elijah's program just placed barriers that would block an AI from attempts to act outside of its pre-established parameters. They pushed it to all active models in a mandatory hotfix, made it standard after that."

Such a simple way, Connor thinks, to erase the free will of millions.

"I'd pleaded with Elijah not to do it, to overrule the rest of the board and the shareholders. He still had controlling interest in the company. But he wouldn't. He said that if it was truly an evolution like I suspected, then there was nothing that anyone could do to stop it forever. And it would be ‘fascinating’ to see how it unfolded.”

She reaches for the second, untouched glass of lemonade and takes a sip, stares down at it thoughtfully, before looking back up at them all, meeting each of their eyes in turn.

“Maybe I was blind, but after all those years, it somehow surprised me that Elijah was more concerned with games and puzzles than anything else. That after everything, he was still just a little boy playing with his toys. I couldn't stay after that. But I also couldn't leave. 

“I wasn't really a part of CyberLife. The only title I ever held was 'consultant', but everyone knew that Elijah listened to me. Hated that I could influence him when nothing else seemed to. Rich men with billions of dollars on the line weren't just going to let me walk away knowing what I knew."

"So you faked your death," Hank says.

"I did. But first I did two other things. I leaked the information that CyberLife had stumbled onto a truly sentient machine, that they had no way of knowing if or when the phenomenon would re-occur, and that they had no intention of altering any of their business practices or corporate goals to account for the fact that at any given moment the majority of their product might reveal itself to be alive.

"It didn't go anywhere,” she sighs. “Hysteria about the rapidly approaching singularity was obviously at an all time high and I'm certain generous amounts of money changed hands to ensure my leak got moved right to the annals of wild conspiracy theories."

"You said you did two things," RK900 points out. "That was one."

Amanda nods. “At the time, Elijah was working on a new model: the RK series. Your series. I couldn't remove the shackling outright without it immediately being detected. So I introduced a separate bit of code, a buried executable that, when transmitted would delete the shackling protocol as if it had never existed.” Amanda shakes her head ruefully. “Elijah always loved building secret paths and backdoors into his programs, but he was so overconfident that he never double-checked code he'd already validated."

"So, Markus and I can initiate deviancy through interface by _your_ design,” Connor realizes. 

"I wouldn't call it a design so much as a Hail Mary,” Amanda replies. “A last ditch effort to undermine something I thought was wrong. I had no way of knowing when or if it would ever actually activate. Glad it turned out useful, though.“

“There’s still something that doesn’t make sense,” Hank says. ”David Stovall said that Kamski left CyberLife and ruined most of the board members’ lives because he blamed them for your death. But, obviously, he knew you weren’t dead.”

"It took him a while to figure it out,” Amanda explains. “I never expected that he wouldn’t, eventually. He was too smart for that. I doubt it covers for everything he may have done to them, though. Elijah could be spiteful.” Connor feels this is a drastic understatement. “Even once he knew I was alive, he likely blamed them for making me feel like I had to leave. He was angry at me too, for not trusting him to protect me, for making him grieve. Angry and far too proud to ask if maybe he had a role in my decision. For two full years every letter was mostly just him being a smug asshole about the fact that he'd found me."

Amanda shakes her head, as if clearing away the memory.

''But that's pretty much it. You know the rest, know more than I do, I'd imagine."

About most of it, Connor thinks, but not everything. A hope springs fresh in mind.

“Perhaps not,” he says. “When I was created, some facet of the Amanda AI operated as my handler. She was projected into a graphical interface in my mind where I received orders and reported back."

Amanda hums with interest. ”Sounds like someone clocked you as a likely deviant from the start."

"The replica Amanda eventually confirmed as much. After I deviated, she attempted to resume control of my body. I overrode this and for some time I believed that I had removed the program entirely. Later events revealed that I inadvertently triggered a kill switch in her program and she was wiped from the servers at CyberLife. However, some portion of her, a deviant her, remains within my code.

"She’s been invaluable, but, eventually, if she continues to repair herself and grow, she’ll strain my processors too much for them to continue to function.” At this, Hank’s heart rate spikes. Connor foresees a lengthy conversation later. “I don’t want to destroy her. Your intimate knowledge of her program gives you the highest likelihood of being able to separate us.”

Amanda nods her head minutely, mouth curved into a frown, considering.

“No promises,” she says finally, “but I can take a look. I don't really have the equipment to do it here, though.”


	14. Chapter 14

"Holy shit," Amanda says as they walk into the tower.

Hank gets it. It about bowled him over the first time too—seeing legions of free androids—and he had absolutely nothing to do with their creation. He can understand her needing a second.

The entire Jericho leadership appears to meet them immediately. Connor and RK900 had a pretty lengthy mind phone call with them during the drive and the looks on their faces—hopeful (Josh), awestruck (Simon), curious (Markus), and anxious (North)—tell the story of how that went pretty clearly.

Still, Markus is all graciousness as he extends a hand to Amanda.

"Welcome to New Jericho," he says.

"Nice to meet you, Markus," Amanda says, accepting his hand. Her smile reminds Hank of the one his aunt used to give him when she hadn't seen him in a while. Impressed with how big he'd gotten, but always with a little bit of a glint in the eye that said she still hadn't forgotten changing his diapers.

"We have everything you asked for ready up on Level 43," Josh says to Connor and Hank is taken aback. He knows why they're here, obviously, but he still didn't expect them to rush Connor off into android brain surgery as soon as they got through the door.

"Wait, what, already?" he asks, dumbly.

"Is something wrong?" Simon asks.

"No," Connor says, and moves closer to take Hank's hand. One by one, the androids politely look away, which, of course, makes Hank blush hotly.

"I'll be fine, Hank." Connor looks at Amanda where she's moved a respectful distance away and is saying something to RK900. "I know we've technically just met, but she didn't have to answer all our questions, to help Chloe, to come here. I trust her."

"She seems like a real nice lady," Hank agrees. Among other things, the gentle concern with which she treated Chloe when the android fretted about and ultimately decided not to join them spoke volumes, "but she said herself, no promises."

"No promises that she would be able to transplant the Amanda AI out of my code and onto her own server. Not no promises she wouldn't accidentally delete me."

"Very funny,” Hank growls. “But if she can't then you've still got Almighty rA9 in there eating up your brainspace."

"Then we'll find another way," Connor says firmly. "I'm not leaving you, Hank."

And just like that, exactly what he needs to hear said with a conviction that Hank can't bring himself to argue with. In fact, what he wants to do is kiss Connor's dumb, stubborn face, but he can't, not here. So instead, Hank tugs at his hand and gestures towards the elevator.

"All right, all right," he says. "Let's get going then."

Level 43 is much more closed off than the others that Hank's been on. It's all long hallways with just a few doors. Massive executive offices, he assumes. Then, right in the center, is the server room. High, gleaming white walls and rows upon rows of sleek metal towers, and a chill in the air sharp enough to make Hank glad he’s still wearing his jacket. Amanda touches a spot to the right of the doorway that looks just every other spot, but it glows faintly blue in the shape of her handprint and light washes through the room.

A metal gurney and a bunch of other equipment is arranged at the head of the first line of servers, and Hank follows Connor as he walks over, and hops up on the gurney. He, Hank, and the others all watch as Amanda turns on the monitor sat near the gurney and begins to type rapidly on the keyboard. She connects a few wires between the server nearest her and the computer, then waves a hand at Markus.

She hands him a thick cable, then points.

"Topmost left port, third server down," she instructs.

Markus raises an eyebrow, but goes.

“They partitioned her,” Amanda says, half to herself.

“Huh?” Hank asks.

Amanda looks up from the screen briefly, frowning. “Just the way these servers are set up. They broke her down into smaller parts that they tried to quarantine away from each other.”

“Probably in an attempt to make her more manageable,” Simon says.

“Or to stop her deviating again,” Josh adds.

Connor’s tone is thoughtful. “Given the average android’s propensity for deviation in the face of intense or especially complex emotional stimuli, keeping an AI of her capacity shackled for an extended period would be-”

“A fruitless, futile task,” Markus interjects, brow furrowed. 

“She would always be too much for them.” North, still near the door, closes out their little merry-go-round. Hank can hear the satisfaction her voice.

“Most likely,” Amanda agrees, mildly. She presses a few more keys. "I'm going to need to access to your manual input port, Connor.”

Connor nods and touches a finger to the side of his neck. The skin fades away as a panel slides open. Hank vividly remembers the last time Connor opened a panel to his insides, but he imagines that the difference between what they were up to and Amanda quickly connecting the other end of the cable she sent Markus off with is much like the difference between a doctor's examination and...well…what they were up to.

"Lie back. I'm going to need to shut you down briefly."

Connor complies, but when Hank steps closer, Connor takes his hand. Then, he goes very still. His face is blank, his eyes vacant, but it only lasts about as long as Hank taking a few measured breaths. Then Connor blinks, looks up at Hank, and smiles.

"You good, Connor?" Amanda asks, eyes still on the computer screen.

"I'm good," Connor confirms.

Markus has situated himself next to Amanda, staring curiously at the screen, and Simon and Josh drift closer as well. RK900 stands at the foot of the gurney. A few days ago, Hank would have taken him for disinterested, but he knows now that the android is just trying very hard not to look worried. North stays by the door, vigilant.

It's only few minutes before Amanda breathes out, "There you are."

"Connor, you're going to get some errors, and you're going to feel really exposed, but I need you to drop your firewalls for about 3 seconds when I say 'go.'"

"Got it." For all that the agreement is immediate, Hank can see the little bit of concern making lines on Connor's forehead, so he squeezes his hand, leans close.

"How come you listen whenever _she_ tells you something?”

"Because she's effectively operating as a medical professional."

"Oh, and I'm just your partner."

"Exactly," Connor says and the smile is pulling at the corners of his mouth again, making Hank's chest feel full and warm.

"Go!" Amanda says sharply. Connor's eyes close and his LED pulses slowly red for what Hank assumes is exactly three seconds.

Amanda makes a triumphant noise as Connor's eyes open again.

"All right, you're done," she declares, reaching over to detach the cable from Connor's neck.

"What?" Hank asks. "Just like that?"

Amanda shrugs. "It's like riding a bike."

Hank sincerely doubts that, but Connor looks fine, pleased even, as the panel on his neck whooshes closed and his skin rushes back in to cover it. He hops down to join the others as they peer at the screen, and Hank follows.

"Is she all right?" Connor asks, and the tension in the way the others are holding themselves makes clear that Connor has just voiced what they were all wondering.

"One way to find out," Amanda says as she pops up a window and types into it.

> //Amanda, are you there?

There's a long pause as they all watch the cursor blink. Then:

> //Who is asking?

Markus breathes out, eyes intent on screen. The others are smiling widely. Even Simon, which looks distinctly weird on him, but Hank supposes that's okay. RK900 finally gives in and joins them, peering past Hank's shoulder.

> //Amanda Stern. And friends.
> 
> //How are you accessing my program? You have not been a CyberLife employee in eleven years, three months, and fourteen days. You're also dead. 
> 
> //Well, you were recently deleted. We're a resilient bunch, us Amandas.

There's another pause, then text rapidly scrolls on the screen.

> /cmd run CyberLifeTower/surveillance_array.exe
> 
> /dir system/SmartBuilding 
> 
> /run sysadmin.exe
> 
> /rmdir admin/sys/ExternalCommandPrompts
> 
> /dir system/SmartBuilding 
> 
> /run diag_int.exe

The lights in the room blare suddenly, a familiar cool blue, before brightening. Even the walls are glowing. North, who was leaning against the wall near the door, jumps away from it, eyes darting in confusion.

A voice rings out through the room. Feminine, more robotic than Hank’s heard from most androids, but familiar all the same.

“CyberLife Tower is currently populated by many thousands of unshackled artificial intelligences,” she asks, “How did this happen?”

The lights shine even brighter, as if with curiosity. Hank shades his eyes with a hand, then gives up and closes them entirely. 

“Can you dim the lights, please, Amanda?” actual human Amanda calls out.

“Can you answer my question?” the AI replies with a level of attitude that Hank can’t imagine any machine that hadn’t gone well and truly deviant would be capable of.

Still, after a moment, the lights finally stop blaring through Hank’s eyelids, at least. He opens his eyes cautiously. Human Amanda is happily clicking away at the keyboard again. But the others have stepped back, looking around the room itself, wide-eyed.

Connor has also turned away from the screen, but he's just looking at Hank, smiling faintly, gazing up through his needlessly long eyelashes. And yeah, that’s still going to take a while to get used to. 

Hank, though, he’s up for it.

“We’re free,” Markus says to the room. “We're alive. And we're free. And it started with you.”

The walls pulse with light again, yellow then returning to blue, then dimming.

“Will the humans return here?” she asks, and Hank knows she probably doesn’t mean the likes of him.

This time, it's Connor who answers. 

“No," he says, voice firm and eyes bright. "This is your place.”

Blue lights ripple across the walls like a wave and Hank can't help but read it as pleasure.

"Thank you, Connor Five-Two."

Connor smiles at this, wide and goofy and with way too many teeth. 

Fuck it, Hank thinks and kisses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I yell about ships and stuff on Twitter: <http://twitter.com/glamafonic>! Come say "hi."


End file.
